| Entry: | We’ve been excavating on site for almost four weeks. Work seems to be progressing well - the South Area is actually visibly different with the removal of the walls that belong to Mellaart’s Shrine 31 (Level IX according to him), the midden above B.118 and its remaining southern infill as a well as the entire infill of B.160. Christina also removed quite a bit of infill from her partial space, space 565 which has been further cross-sectioned to produce a step towards the deep sounding.
What has been quite clear to me this season and with the evidence that I have been observing from the removal of room infill across the site is the abundance in which we actually have roof remains within the infill. In B.160, in Space 565, in B.132 there seems to be evidence for roof. Macroscopically speaking what distinguishes roofs from internal floors have been their contexts - a series of trampled floor surfaces that can sometimes cover a large area (B.3 roof collapse was apparently over 1m long) that don't connect with surrounding architectural elements - in particular the walls. Wendy Matthews has been able to show through her micromorphological analyses that these sorts of deposits contain ‘water-laid crusts’. These types of features are evidence through "puddling" - a strong argument for the existence of an uncovered space. However, there is the strong possibility that some of these roofs might have been covered with light structures so not all roof deposits should need to contain these puddling markers.
Another question of course has been the use of a second story within the buildings and how we can see evidence for this. The strongest candidates for such evidence has come from burnt buildings: Building 79, building 80, to large degree B.52. It is very probable that these buildings contained a mezzanine like level that covered some sections of the space. How does evidence to support this mezzanine level show itself in unburnt buildings? Floating plastered floors? Both B.131 and B.132 seemed to have some of this in its infill.
And of course there is the question of a proper second story. Some burnt buildings like B.77 seem have strong evidence for a second story seen in their infill - i.e. collapsed sheet walls that would have made the internal height of the house 3.2m (House 2012, 502 ). B.132 also contains strong evidence of a second story, particularly over the side room of the building.
These have been questions on my mind these past few weeks. Hopefully this season we can continue to complicate matters surrounding architecture and use of space here on site. |
