| Entry: | Continue to chug on down through the deposits. It is very weird to be working here and just be basically removing a sequence of layers in an effectively arbitrary area, it feels almost like being back in Britain in some respects. The third spit of stabling (4710) / (4715) was numbered (4716). It sealed a bone/antler cluster (4717). Below this was a general infilling/makeup deposit (4718) and then what appears to be another set of stabling deposits (4719) / (4821) / (4822). The constituent elements of these are very similar to the later stabling deposits but the bands are thicker, slightly less well defined and contain more charcoal but I’m not quite sure what these differences imply. I am becoming more and more convinced that these are ‘stabling’ deposits but I also think that other activities probably occurred in the same space, perhaps during different times of the year. The lower stabling sequence contained a nice ‘hearth’ (4720) which is basically just a well defined oval of charcoal with a little scorching beneath but no structure around it, presumably a transient single use feature. Beneath the stabling seems to be some form of burning event which I still have to dig. There was also a clay lump in the south-east corner (4823), this might just be a lump but could be the edge of something structural. We will never know which, such are the joys of arbitrary excavation areas.
Was discussing reconstruction drawings of building 18 with John, as usual this focussed my mind really well on issues I hadn’t really considered. In particular I now think that there must have been a ladder in the south-east corner which wasn’t excavated. A number of things in this corner of the room such as the locations of the burial, the obsidian retrieval cut and the late artefact scatter plus the last phase of F.496 all make much more sense if one allows for the presence of a putative ladder.Entered By: Craig Cessford |
