| Entry: | diary entry 3
Today I have been excavating areas of the rubbish pit beside the hearth. There are up to 5 pots in there, 2 grind stones, a stone with red ochre on it, lots and lots of bones, some mortar/plaster/burnt material spill seemingly from the hearth/oven, lots of different soil colours, and evidence for puddling/mashing of the floor, so this area could also be the entrance way into the house, lying beneath the hole in the roof. I began by brushing up everything, and planning everything as I found it. I identified 4 rough layers or areas to work with, based on levels and soil colours. The first 2 layers came off together, uncovering 2 pots (10664 and 10665), which were removed in the morning after breakfast by Norcan. After some more light brishing to remove some of the exposed soil I planned and removd 10666, a cluster of objects lying roughly central in the rubbish pit, including some mortar spill, a stone with ochre on it, a broken fired-clay object, and a quernstone I could see poking through beneath the mortar. Upon excavation a second stone was revealed beside the quernstone I had seen, so I removed that from the 10666 unit. A common floor is slowly being revealed, a sandy orangy yellow stuff but it is still very mixed. I identified another layer at the south of the fill (10670) and will excavate it tomorrow - it may run under the platform on the East of the building which will complicate the stratigraphy, but opens up the posibility of a rubbish dump being used both before and after the construction of the platform, in which some of the rubbish mound was incorporated into the platform - I will expore all this tomorrow. Certainly what I initially removed from the rubbish pit was over the platform. Bang on 3 o'clock another pot turned up in the 10670 unit, just poking through. It appears to be in good condition, and sealed in a relatively hard and compact layer, more for tomorrow. I have done plan drawings in 1:10 and 1:20, although the units sem to be mixed in with a random fill which has no consistent makeup there are discrete units within that which can be identified.
Richard was ill today, Roddy has started peeling back more floor layers - it is possible we are reaching the lower layers of this house, the soils seem to be changing, as is the plaster (changing from white to grey).Entered By: Alex Pryor |
