| Entry: | CMP did some more wall clarification in B.107 today. In the NW corner, she found only two wall phases on top of each other, as seen last year as well. After removing some remaining areas of fill from walls all around the building, and emptying a few rodent disturbances to make sure they really are rodent disturbances, most walls looked – ehem – interesting. Except for the uppermost building phase with its clear mortar lines, the lower phases only look like walls to people who get to scrape them. We therefore felt the need to remove the outermost few cm, cut them back like sections to investigate better possible bricks, mortar, and generally the building material. But before that, to document the eroded and disturbed nature of the lower walls. CMP therefore cleaned for a 3D-photo session tomorrow.
TSK is moving around B.105 to clarify wall stratigraphy. He spent a bit of time in the morning to investigate the corner where F.2424, F.5053 and F.3303 come together north of the buttress – there are clear remains of plaster 31202 in this corner which to me is the so far clearest sign that at least these three features, and maybe all features in the building, were at some point all standing and in use together. How significant one little bit of plaster can be. I suspect it did not erode because it is so nice and protected in this corner. Supposedly all features were covered in plaster at some point.
TSK then moved over to the northern buttresses to cut a small section through F.3365, F.3310, F.5061 and F.5051. I decided that firstly, the buttresses are the points where stratigraphy can be investigated best. And secondly that we need to investigate all four buttresses, we cannot project from one to another as all four buttress areas look different.
It is driving me mad. In the west, there seem to be only one buttress with one phase – so far. APV, after helping TMK to remove room fill 31184 until the area got too small for two people, re-started taking down that western buttress F.5062, maybe we will be more enlightened soon. She already found out that its mortar-brick layering is irregular, sometimes grotesquely irregular. She uncovered the actual top of one brick layer, under one continuous mortar layer, and it looked like a small Himalaya.
This western buttress seems to be abut by wall F.3346 and F.3381 (the latter south of buttress F.5062, also called F.3346 last year but cannot be as both are abutting the buttress), just as the southern upper buttress F.3363 is abut by wall F.3368 and F.3382 (again, both collectively F.3368 last year but now two features) and the northern seems to be abut by F.3310 and F.3311. The latter two abut the plaster of F.5051 and therefore we do NOT see a double-thick wall here so far, unlike in the east (F.3380 under F.2424 and F.3303, now with feature number). All very confusing. More soon.
TMK worked on finishing room fill layer 31184, with APV. Tomorrow all three B.105-inhabitants can clear the bottom together, take a photo, and then we go further down. The fallen wall F.18372 seems to be really thick and continue further down into unexcavated. We seem to find more and larger fragments of marl as we go down – all that plaster that is not on the walls any more. I am not an expert of erosion (yet), but I do wonder how the entire building got filled so homogeneously with building debris. Of course we see subtle differences, more marl here, more brick there, more pottery in this corner. And also, the top of the erosion layer was irregular, we found in first in the two northern corners. But generally, all is rather spread out and mixed, many small lumps of different materials next to each other. I would have expected more deposits that look like candle-wax running down from a candle. Maybe there was some human help in this collapsing process?
NMR started excavating room fill 31199 in Space 454 today. After a bit of digging, she noticed both that there is only fill under the plaster stack 16932, and that her working area is too small to both see something and work comfortably. It looked more like mimicking a rodent. We therefore decided to open up the entire room, which is not that large anyway. That meant that she had to deal first with the area where 16932 connects to the plaster 16999 which was between the removed buttress F.3301 and over the lower F.3379. She investigated that 16999 is identical to 31142 – one continuous plaster layer running from between the buttresses all the way into the room. Then she started removing all of the remaining plaster with one collective number 16932.
DSE finished his room fill layer 31189 in Space 310 today, took a photo and started the next arbitrary layer 31207. We all have the feeling the fill is changing; to less inclusions and less finds (“garden soil”). This also seems to be visible in the section through the room he is producing. We will keep checking that.
GWN worked further on the thick fill layer 31196 under (?) B.98. He noticed that the uppermost few cm of this layer contain some finds and inclusions, while further down it all becomes like garden soil. He is now 30cm deep in the unit and still cannot see any changes. I am excited about this layer, as it seems to be an intentional preparation for the erection of the building. In a landscape as culturalised as the mounds and their surrounding must have been by the Early Chalcolithic, it does take some determination to get such empty soil. Either you dig somewhere convenient nearby within the settlement, than you have to sieve through the soil to remove finds. Or you go further away from the site (including all the previously settled areas), then you have to carry all that soil to your construction site. We do not always see that much determination to good craftsmanship in our buildings.
JMK started her sondage in the Space 446-Space 452 transition region today. So far, homogeneous, nearly find-less fill as GWN has, too. We noticed that we have to investigate the relation between her new wall F.3379 and wall F.3367 (found last year) one of the coming days. There were just so many small walls in this border region – the area seems to have been remodelled several times.
ASO came across an awesome cluster 31206 in northern Space 448 today, and PAB helped her clean it. Apart from large pot sherds, articulated animals bones and one really large rib (cattle?), they found worked bone, worked stone, two seemingly unworked fragments of some special shiny stone we had never seen before. The cluster is large, but not as dense as some others we had – but still recognisably different from all other fill we have seen in Sp.448 before and probably the result of one depositional event. We decided to close the arbitrary unit 31169 with this, as we are starting to see contexts now. |
