| Entry: | We have been working in TPC, Trench 3, since Sunday 19th. I am working with Chelsea and Daniel from my uni, Flinders University. We are helping out in TPC for a couple of weeks before the West Mound study season started. So far we have mostly been ‘getting ready’. We removed the geotextile, cleaned, and Marta came to take photos for a 3D model. Arek told us that the main objective for the season is to clarify the stratigraphy of walls in the western part in preparation of next season, when they are actually going to open that little part of South that is closest to TPC Trench 3, is to find the stratigraphic connection. To this end, I spend most of yesterday cleaning up the western section which looked a bit rough before, but which we need for the stratigraphy. Today I removed the rest of a late disturbance which first looked like the remaining half of a circular pit (cut 22768, fill 22769) but during removal it turned out that the cut might actually be part of the large Hellenistic terracing cut 30229, with some Hellenistic rubble, which only looked semicircular because rodents changed its form a little. Chelsea excavated a pit (cut 22766) filled with loose dark soil (ashy? fill 22761) in the Late Neolithic space 520, south of wall 3952. It turns out that the pit runs under that wall, confirming the impression that the base of the wall was already reached in 2012 or 2013. Just in general, there is a real proliferation of walls north of Spaces 515 and 520. The walls of Space 520, in its original form anyway, are overlaid by different walls, of which F3952 is one, and 7172 probably another.
This observation led us to today scrape down the tops of walls in the northwestern part of Trench 3 (F. 3952, 7171, 7176) to get a better impression of the stratigraphy. All three walls are neatly next to each other, but built at different times. 7176 was built against 7171, which still has plaster remaining on its northern façade. This seems to have been part of a general remodelling of the space north to it, which Phillip and Tom have been investigating in the last few days. We will remove this wall tomorrow. The very impressive double wall 3952 might also be later than wall 7171 in the centre, because its base is so high up – it’s only maybe 40cm high. I will do some more wall scratching tomorrow to verify this hypothesis so we can also remove this wall. That will start making things clearer – there is certainly too many walls here! |
