| Entry: | CMP is working further on construction features in B.107. She cut the potential posthole 31197 and at the same time what seems to have been a protruding older wall under F.2426 and after a bit of excavation turns out to have been fill (with not many inclusions, but several large finds) 31212 in front of that older wall, which in the end does have nearly identical outlines with F.2426 but still no clear feature number as we still do not know which wall this is. To me, it looks like F.3373, not F.3304 based on the material. The posthole does not seem like a posthole to me, because its diameter is small, it is set in fill, and the supposed plastering of its outline is really made up from many different material, marl, grey fill, and something like more orange clay.
TMK, APV and TSK together cleaned B.105 for an overview photo. After this, TMK and APV resumed work on the room fill (31210) by first going down close to the big ground stone and “fallen wall” 18372 whose position seems more and more intentional to us and who both continue further down below the level were are on now. I scraped around the bottom parts of the walls a little to make sure they all still go down into unexcavated, which they do.
JHB came out to have a closer look at the big ground stone, scraping down the surrounding fill to find its basal boundary. He noticed and sampled a lot of phytoliths around it, and that the fill did change from what it had been like previously – many little flecks of the materials we have been dealing with all along (mud brick, marl) instead of larger lumps. The position of the stone and “fallen” wall 18372 is curious, but might not mean anything.
While TMK and JHB were busy with the stone, APV moved to clarify the “door” situation in southern B.105. while we were always quite sure that F.3364 and F.3341 do form a gap (doorway) here, it seems to have been blocked of at some point by F.3345 which however always was a fuzzy wall which we want to see clearer. Also, this is an ideal point to figure out whether F.3368 is a double-brick wide wall or not. APV started by cutting back F.3345 vertically which brought instant success by seeing its mud brick and mortar really clearly. Tomorrow, we can make a nice arbitrary flat planum in the gap of F.3364 and F.3341 and see more.
TSK worked further on his northern buttress situation. After cutting an EW section through both F.5061 and F.3365, both looked not like two different constructions on top of each other, but really like one – the brick and mortar lines were really evenly spaced, or as evenly as they get in Trench 5. The only visible difference is that the brick material of the uppermost four layer, supposedly F.5061, look brighter and more greyish, and all the ones underneath darker and more brownish. But maybe that is due to drying out? He also had a few larger finds stuck between F.3365 and the wall behind – what might that mean? Why put several medium-sized pot sherds there, and a bit of burnt clay?
NMR in Space 454 removed the plaster layers 16932 today (collectively with one unit number) and then finally had a clear open space to dig down in (fill 31199). It looked like a moonscape, due to the uneven basal boundary of 16932 and previous meep-meep style sondaging by us. She started going down in the highest point – the SW corner, which has been suspiciously full of finds since we first found it. It continues to be like this. The most interesting find of the day was what seemed like a frontlet (pair of horns with piece of skull attached to hold them together, a term we learnt from DCO a few years ago) in the very corner of F.3358 and F.3362. PFB thinks this is some special intentional deposition and is expecting a pit cut or small installation around it, which we will check tomorrow.
DSE is going down in Space 310-south, finding lots of nice things. He finished his arbitrary layer 31189 and started a new one 31207. The surrounding walls are well preserved and plastered. So far, the potentially two buttresses in the building are not very clearly visible from Space 310. NMR’s work in the south room might bring more clarity.
CLC and GWN made great progress in the subfloor sondage today. CLC removed the area where the buttresses F.3326 and F.5057 had been, GWN finished layer 31196. After that, we had one empty rectangle. I had an inkling that the buttresses might continue further down, which turned out not to be true after they scraped the surface and it all turned out to be one homogeneous fill. However, in the developing sections we see that the dark grey layer 18377 is abutting the buttresses, slightly sloping down towards them. Which means, the buttresses were built first, then a homogeneous fill layer 18377 was applied, and then the floor laid. Very interesting.
JMK finished her sondage 31200, assisted by CMP and IF, in post-haste speed. Next working step will be to clarify the relation of her newly discovered wall F.3379 to the surrounding walls F.3367 and F.3324. It is in any case exciting to find out that this little wall F.3379 did separate Space 452 of B.98 and Space 446 at some point. At a later point, both were connected by a doorway between F.3320 and F.3321. The many floors in Space 446 seem to go with this later phase, but stratigraphy in this very corner is very complicated and something to do on a rainy winter afternoon in the office. One odd thing is that the bin feature F.3377 did NOT abut F.3379, there was ca.40cm horizontal fill between.
In Space 448, TET finished taking out cluster 31206 with a lot of special finds (our first stone stamp seal!) while PAB removed tons of soil and finished 31169. They produced a flat surface through the entire room which we had not time to look at towards the end of the day, but I am looking forward to seeing it tomorrow. There might not be any construction features in there, but it is possible. |
