| Entry: | What a day. So much progress.
Towards the middle of the day I got quite stressed, though. B.107. Who would have thought that this would turn out so complicated. Also, I hate those meep meep rodents.
CMP cut a NS section into a part of the eastern wall (F.2425 and wall(s) underneath). After that, both walls were beautifully visible, especially the light grey mortar lines of F.3305. But – no third wall underneath! I could not believe it. The “rubble layer” that I saw between the second (middle) and lowermost wall phase in the building is a rodent hole. Those little assholes. When cutting back the wall, the “layer” disappears. It really is, unbelievably, a quite horizontal and really long rodent burrow in the most unfortunate spot. I still cannot believe that this one rodent managed to fool us.
After this discovery, we had to reconsider the northern wall, where we saw three wall phases yesterday. I started scraping and saw that the lower part still had many non-wallish inclusions and probably we were not on the wall itself yet. PAB, finished with his work in Space 448, jumped in and did a fabulous job at cutting back this wall even further to a clean level when we also saw two brick-and mortar-walls on top of each other. At the same time, CMP worked on a section through the west wall and came up with the same result. I would say, question solved – only two wall phases. The second one has that faint grey mortar. I have to say goodbye to my third wall phase, which is ok. The buttresses go with the second phase, except for the only preserved buttress of the upper phase, F.3356.
GWN and CLC removed a lot of soil today, first exposing fully the strange heap of dark red clayey soil, then removing that to find the continuation of their red and white lines underneath – in shape of a buttress F.3387. The two lines surround something that is clearly brick material. Not quite so clearly visible in the belonging wall, but we will get that too. So, my wishes came true and we found another architecture phase with different outlines! Quite interesting, except for the fact that this is red painted plaster, is the red sediment on top – intentional? It is so clean and in such a neat heap. But why put a heap of sediment on top of the remains of a buttress? PFB reminded us of closure rituals on the East Mound. It is really quite interesting. The red seems to continue further down in the west, down the façade of the buttress. We will see about that. Also, there is a clearly dark-ashy-charcoaly lense on the same level as the preserved top of this buttress. Botany specialist Liz came out, liked it and advised us what to do with it. Actually, that is slightly sad – that she has to get excited about a burnt lense. Considering the barley-filled bins found in TPC this year, that is not quite so impressive.
JMK scraped walls around Space 452 today. She verified that wall F.3379 abut both F.3324, with which it forms a corner, F.2428 whose continuation it is, and apparently also F.3367, the strange short NS wall we found last year. One suspects that not all walls were built at the same time, especially because F.3379 is a brick and mortar wall and the others are not. Maybe F.3379 was put in to close off a previous gap in the walls? Also, many of the floors in Space 446 do abut F.3379, but this feature is not preserved much higher than the surrounding floors,
JMK then spent a few more minutes scraping the gap 15336, but it got too complicating trying to follow it, so we decided to be content with the pictures from the top taken in 2010.
Interestingly, wall F.3379 might continue even further east. TET and PAB finished removing fill 31215 in northern Space 448, after which PAB moved over to B.107 and TET started the fine work in the space. He first cut fresh the exposed northern and eastern façade of buttress F.3384, which is now clear with mud brick and mortar lines. Then he started working on the northern wall of that space. We might have two different walls here. Further to the east, we see a wall covered in plaster whose top had already been visible in 2010 (F.3330). However, in the west TET uncovered a piece of a wall that had identical materials to F.3379 and could be a continuation of that wall. The two wall pieces he saw do currently not connect, and seem to have slightly different orientations. I do find it quite interesting that the buttresses F.3383 and F.3384 do not have the same materials that F.3324 is made of – but do share material with F.3379. Maybe all were built at the same time in one re-structuring event? We also seemed to see a brighter layer at the bottom of the exposed part of F.3384 – maybe the buttress is already finished and sitting on fill? But we got fooled several times by such impressions, there sometimes just are bricks with different materials.
TMK made big progress in B.105 today. He verified that we excavated the fill below the basal boundaries of both the fallen wall 18372 and the big groundstone next to it. JHB then came out to remove the stone, and by chance also botany specialist Liz was there to suggest a sampling strategy for the surrounding of the stone. TMK in the meantime removed the fallen wall. He then flattened the fill and started a sondage (finding the floor inscha’allah) in front of buttress F.3353, the eastern buttress whose façade is much better preserved than that of the northern and southern buttress, so it is easier to verify that it is continuing down.
JHB already has a few interesting ideas about the stone, which really seems to have functioned as one installation with the wall piece.
TSK continued working on plaster layer 16999, but on the other side, the western side. He confirmed and refined that general impression we had last year – the very white, undisturbed layer 16999 can clearly be found on top of the old buttress F.3376, under F.3301 – however on top of F.3312, under F.5058, there is plaster which is less white and more patchy (therefore given another unit number 31223). I wonder how that happened. If it were just another material, I would not worry so much. Maybe they ran out of the one batch they had prepared and then made another batch. But the patchiness is weird. I will have to think about this. A little patch of 16999 is running from the buttress onto the wall, a small but important piece of plaster, indicating that both plastering event did take place before the features were built on top. That is further indicated by the fact that F.5058 and F.3301 were one construction, as proven last year when we saw continuous mortar and mud brick lines. The plaster layer 31223, and presumably under it wall F.3312, directly touches F.3380 of Building 105 next to it, seemingly no gap. Does that indicate that both buildings were built in temporal closeness?
NMR and DSE worked together on clarifying construction feature(s) in central B.106 which is relevant for both of their work. We took off the patch of plaster layer 16999 under the removed buttress F.3302 which looked funny because it was cut into a triangle by a Byzantine pit F.3331 and also has a curved base. Afterwards, we seemed to see in plan a construction feature F.3386 in continuation of the “buttress” F.3376 recognised last year – maybe one continuous wall between the two spaces? From the top, the feature is reasonably clear. It seems to be surrounded by badly preserved plaster. However, seen from Space 310, where plaster on the lower walls is well preserved, we saw a feature coming from the west, but not continuing all the way towards the east wall. So – plan view from inside Space 454 contradicted the section view from inside Space 310. DSE started to move a section forwards from inside Space 310 in this mini-space where no construction feature is visible. We will see how that goes. Also, the whole reasons why we started tackling this strange construction feature in the first place is that DSE has these mysterious plaster lumps in Space 310, just in the unclear “does not look like a wall from the side, but looks like a wall from the top” part. We cannot go deeper in his sondage without having clarified the plaster.
After that, NMR tried to expose walls in the SE corner of Space 454, which proves to be a quite difficult task. There are large lumps of plaster and brick which are not connected to the wall, but definitely have to be documented – some kind of collapse or signs of destruction? |
