| Entry: | Yesterday Roddy and Mary continued excavating midden deposits in Space 105. Excavating south of Jon's area from last season an upper fill (1050) was excavated from within cut (1041), that apparently cut through a massive and compact deposit of building debris to the west. Further fills excavated stratigraphically have been (1054), (1057), (1059) and (1061), all midden type deposits, rich in debris and dark grey in colour. These fall from west to east although this slope is misleading as it also defines the slope as Mellaart left the area and therefore the direction of slope will not be certain until any signs of Mellaart's work has been cleared. An arbitrary layer (1051) was also excavated to the SW of the area but the relationship to the fills was unclear due to extreme dessication. Upon excavating unit (1064) the next stratigraphic fill within the cut, Roddy and Mary have decided that the cut is actually the other way round, this is what they've been exploring today. Therefore the massive mudbricky deposit is within a cut that cuts the midden deposits and if this is correct it fits in with what is coming up in the other areas under excavation. That the state of play in their area at the end of today. All units are being bulk sampled as well as spot sampling, potentially 80 lits. from each deposit is being sampled. The hypothesis at the moment is that the massive brick debris represents some form of foundation activity, presumably to consolidation prior to wall construction over non-firm midden deposits.
In Space 106 the room is being excavated in half section, Jon and Anwen have so far excavated an arbitrary layer (1052), to find their feet and actually represents a deposit Mellaart didn't complete, but is basically the same as the next unit (1053), an undifferentiated building fill running below the walls. This sealed what they thought was a pit cut but upon excavation was differential deposits.
Ian and Ali began excavating in Space 107 yesterday and continued today, Ian for the morning only as he had to leave for Ankara in the afternoon. The eastern half of the roon is being excavated at the moment, one to establish a working section and also because the floors that Naomi was going to excavate the day before has been held up. This is because altrhough the blocking from 107 is released, it's not on the other side in Space 108. So the deposits Ian and Ali are digging are earlier than the floors the blocking and also the walls. Unit (1056) was their first and arbitrary cleaning layer and possibly represents remnants of packing/levelling over the underlying midden deposits in preparation for the overlying floors. Unit (1060) was the next deposit excavated from the NE corner, but is now apparently part of an earlier deposition sequence. Stratigraphically below (1056) is (1062), comprising of mudbrick debris with plaster fragments. Having removed (1056), several deposits on tip lines, generally east to west can be seen which will be investigated by Ali and myself tomorrow.
Naomi and I worked in Space 108 yesterday cleaning back to the east wall face, prior to excavating the blocking between 107 and 108. However we've been somewhat held up as Mellaart hadn't excavated right up to the wall face. The section he left shows several cuts pre-occupation and post-occupation, and continuous plaster renderings traceable from wall face to floors. The occupation is presumably Mellaart's Level VII that overlies Level VIII which is 'Courtyard' ie. midden. To aid our interpretation of this section the Catalhoyuk Database was accessed, it's first use! The print-up from the database defined all the architectural features in this house in Level VII, and although there were supposedly features abutting the wall there is no evidence of them in section. As a maximum of only 0.2m remains of these deposits we're only going to draw the section at 1:10 and excavate stratigraphically but without plans or samples. The section will be adequate to locate this sequence of events. Wendy came up yesterday and spent some time cleaning and interpreting the various deposits, she's quite happy not to take specific samples. Once this section is clear we can start dismantling the walls and at this stage most, if not all are virtually ready to come out. However before the walls go they need to be digitised to create a 3-D image and photographed to superimpose the 3-D image and apparently our section drawings will also be superimposed. Yesterday morning Boris Dorothy and I attempted to beat the sunlight to the walls of Space 108, to photograph them but we were unprepared, the marker nails were too small to see, Colin wasn't around to tell us what we could get away with at this moment of crisis and basically it was mad panic. Anyway we did what we could and after all that it'll have to be redone anyway. Next time we'll make sure Colin comes up early too.
Basically at this stage it appears that the walls forming this group of rooms are bottoming over the midden and form a shallow terrace down towards the west. This would be very convenient.
We finally got a working grid in by yesterday afternoon. It took ages and ages going through the mapping programme, very frustrating but I found out today that the EDM we have is different from last years. This morning Colin took Atakhan and I through the procedure of XYZ co-ords.It involves a lot more calculation on our part and actually we can get out of using it by taking the X and Y from our grid and using a dumpy. But it's there and once we get used to it it should be quicker.
The specialists were on tour both today and yesterday, useful to have them come around but they and various visitors to show around the site can take up considerable time. Anyway, I think they're happy, although there is still a lot to remember and I spend a lot of time making sure everyone has what they need. I continue to search for time to draw up a feature and skeleton recording sheet as well as instructions on filling out the various recording sheets.Entered By: Shahina Farid |
