| Entry: | The first day of digging. It was a bit difficult to begin because both of the people that had been excavating the area I was in were away. I started with some oven deposits making up F524 in space 178/ building 23. This represented the latest activity in the area. I took off 4759 which covered the scorched oven base 4760. 4759 was a mixed clayey deposit and probably resulted from a later in-filling of the oven. The oven base itself was burnt into a hard crust. Both were easily removed. The lower layers of material that made up the oven, lay beneath a series of mixed clayey deposits which spilled over its northern and western edges. 4761 was not directly beneath the upper oven deposits but overlay other layers that were. It was a mixed layer and hard to distinguish from the other mixed layers around it especially to the west. It became clear on excavation that to the west the layer was incorporating different deposits which were not necessarily related. As a result, only its eastern extent was removed where it clearly overlay the underlying clayey deposit 4764 which in turn, directly overlay the lower layers of the oven. This introduced me to the general problem of trying to relate interleaving deposits that are being excavated by different people, not necessarily at the same time!Entered By: Anwen Cooper |
