| Entry: | End of the first week on site. Today we continued with excavating a range of deposits in Building 1. We were joined this morning by Louise, so I showed her the routine and she got to work removing room fill near the centre of Space 71. There are now 7 of us working in Building 1 and we are a little short of tools etc. When Atakan joins us we will be 8. On Saturday I will give everyone a revision course in sampling and labelling etc, as there has been so much for them to learn in a very short time. They are all doing well and have little trouble dealing with the complex stratigraphy. All in all the deposits are very clear, especially if sections etc are kept clean. Today we proceeded as follows: I dug more deposits in and around Space 111 in the northeast corner of Space 71, exposing very fugitive upper floors and occupation deposits. I then moved to the northwest corner of Space 71 where last year we had exposed the top of a large plastered platform. I cleaned this area and discovered that the platform has at least 2 phases of construction each comprising multiple replasterings. Traces of red paint are visible on two lines of plaster on the east face of the lower phase of the platform - these should be more fully exposed as we excavate the upper floors away. Gavin more or less completed the exposure of the main lower phase of FI 11 - it looks very impressive with walls standing some 30-40 cm high and with a good solid floor. He is now removing burnt collapse along the southern end of Space 70. Serap has been removing room fill and ash deposits along the western edge of Space 70 and will soon be down to the main floor. Mehmet removed more deposits in Space 71 just to the west of the access between Spaces 70 and 71. He now has floor over much of this area. Engin continued to remove heavily burnt deposits along the southern edge of Space 71. We have no trace of a floor in this area and are now wondering if there is major disturbance here. We removed fragile chunks of carbonised wood and plaster lumps from here. Nurcan excavated in the south half of Space 110, exposing a very solid white plaster floor, undulating in form with white traces of interwoven matting in one area. Louise removed room fill in the centre of Space 71. At 3 o' clock we had a site tour, all of us visiting Mellaart's area first and then all back to the North Area. Everything has gone well this week and we are now well into the routine. The major advance has been to abolish electronic measuring equipment from our area - it is so much quicker and more accurate with the dumpy and tapes and conventional planning methods. We have also made advances in rationalising the sampling strategy although there is still room for improvement and streamlining here.Entered By: Roger Matthews |
