| Entry: | On 22 August I proceeded with a sondage in building 105, with the aim of finding a floor or at least further activity surfaces. The sondage is delineated by the eastern and southern buttresses, which are used as controls for the depth and architecture of the hypothetical wall/floor interface.
The sondage is currently perhaps 30 cm deep and has uncovered three distinct fills or layers.
The first 10 cm of the sondage were recorded as part of unit 31221. The fill was a typical heterogeneous mixture of materials: compact dark greyish-brown silt was dominant, but interspersed with lighter yellowish clay and mortar. Finds were typical pottery and bones of medium-sized mammals.
Underneath the topmost fill was a distinct layer of compact, reddish-brown clayey silt mottled with minor concentrations of mortar/plaster, as in the fill above. The layer was given a new unit number (31224) on the basis of this clear change in soil type. Furthermore, the unit included three pieces of groundstone (x1, x2 and x3), of which x2 is still embedded within the eastern section wall. X1 is the largest of the three, and the soil underneath was sampled for phytoliths (s.3) and traces of orangey pigment (s.4). The pigment colour is similar to the one found embedded on the massive groundstone slab (x1) from u. 31210. Taken together, the change in the soil colour and the presence of groundstones indicates that u. 31224 most likely was an activity surface similar to 31221, on top of which the groundstone slab and the mudbrick structure (u. 18372) lay.
Underneath the reddish-brown surface, the soil turns into homogeneous, soft, dark greyish-brown silt. It is notable that in comparison to all the other fills I’ve excavated, this layer/fill is markedly poor in finds: only occasional pieces of pottery and fragmented animal bones, and no obsidian whatsoever. At this depth, perhaps 20-25 cm below the top levels of the sondage (u. 31221), the buttresses also have lost their mudbrick and mortar lines, becoming a muddle of those materials mixed with light yellowish clay. Could this be the foundations of the buttresses?
Just before finishing off, I finally encountered a flat, compact surface at the depth of about 30 cm. The surface seems to be of a light beige clay, suspiciously like plaster. More sondage and horizontal exposure will be needed to resolve whether it is a genuine built floor, or yet another of these activity surfaces.
Taken together, the end of the buttresses, the plaster surface and the finds-poor soil above it would suggest some sort of a floor that was covered with relatively clean soil at one stage of its use life, perhaps to provide foundations for the activity surface with groundstones. However, there are questions that need answering. Why don’t the buttresses extend all the way to the hypothetical plaster floor? Are they later additions, behind which we could find older buttresses that extend all the way down? Why wouldn’t the people bother plastering any of the later activity surfaces? These are questions that may be difficult to answer this late in the season, as some of them would require extensive exposure of the layers. Right now we can at least figure out what lies underneath the plaster surface. Ultimately, this may help us understand how uniformly the floors were built in the West Mound, shedding light on the functional and social aspects of this architecture. |
