| Entry: | 07-08-2013
Today we began with scraping the southeast quadrant of building 98 in order to better understand whether the layer between the first floor (16977) and second floor is present. After scrape, the majority of the area appears to be the same light yellowish white clay as the first floor we removed, except for a small area in the northwest that appears gray, ashy, and not as compact as the surrounding.
After seeing several holes in the south east area east & north of the sondage while scraping, I wanted to check that they were animal burrows as opposed to any type of posthole feature. By excavating the four of them with a spoon, the irregularity or deep and soft continuation did indeed indicate animal burrowing activity as opposed to a cultural feature. Subsequently, in order again to see whether we had already removed the small layer between the upper floor and the lower floor, I extended the sondage approximately 10cm to the east in order to have a fresh cut profile to observe. After this new profile was created, it indeed appears that our current top layer (which I labeled today as 31133) is the second floor that was observed in the sondage last season.
The northwest gray area (31134) was excavated by ASO approx 8 cm down. We initially thought that this unit was more recent stratigraphically, perhaps a pit cut into the second floor below. Her northern profile seems to show that there are two yellowish white floors separated only by a very thin dark layer, with the dark grey fill of feature 31134 below. So, perhaps it was not an intrusion, but instead, the floor above has been worn away in this area, revealing the grey fill below.
Last season, however, all of these units (first floor, fill under first floor, second floor, grey fill under second floor, and then light gray fill under that) were all given unit numbers when the sondage was excavated. Therefore, the numbers we assigned today, before we were sure that we had indeed reached the second floor and the fill below, were 31133 (now corresponding to 18376 from last season) for the light area and 31134 for the grey area (now corresponding to 18376). These new numbers will be canceled, and last seasons’ numbers will be utilized. |
