| Entry: | Yesterday Eda and I started the morning by quickly trying to finish the plan of the features visible in grid sq 1035/1145. There was just the last bit of topsoil that needed removing to the south of the late wall before we could get the plan done. After a few minutes of mattocking we hit more human bone and it turns out that within a matter of a few square metres there are at least five burials (so far) from both Neolithic and Byzantine contexts. Eda started a well preserved Byzantine burial and I started on what looked like a jumble of very poorly preserved bone. My bones were overlain by another burial F.1243 which consisted of baby bones in good condition, if slightly disturbed, that clearly overlay Neolithic deposits and probably formed part of a Byzantine burial for which the cut could not be defined.
Late yesterday, after feature F.1243 had been planned and lifted, I started cleaning down on to the Neolithic skeleton and its date was seems to be confirmed by its situation just to the south of a plastered mudbrick wall, slightly east of another wall and cut into material that appeared to be roomfill. The burial F. 1244 would have therefore been situated in the north-western corner of a building.
Towards the end of the day I came across a stamp seal (X1) close to large, rectangular bead (X2) located between a distal femur and some dentition. During its manufacture, an attempt had been made to drill the bead longitudinally which had failed and a second diagonally aligned hole had been drilled through the piece instead.
Today, after a bit more cleaning a skull and maxilla were revealed at the western end of the burial cut indicating that there was at least two bodies interred in the grave; more cleaning is needed to hopefully reveal the positions of the skeletons and/or the presence of additional interments. Towards the end of today the cleaning process revealed a plaster floor below the bones which is a bit of a relief because at least I know that the bones are not going to extend into some massive pit of human remains such as that which Jon had to deal with.
The southern part of my feature is truncated by a late burial cut which, at present, appears to have two burials within it laid above one another.Entered By: ??? |
