| Entry: | Yes yes, I am not a very good journal keeper ñ never have been all my life. It been a while since I have recorded anything down here.
We completed the work in this cute little building, and I am almost done with all the paper work. Thatís good, since I have to leave tomorrow. We stopped excavating when we revealed (and sometimes accidentally dug through) all the features. Its been slow progress, but at least we had a bunch of stuff to record! So, lets come to the description.
Well, our cute little house consists of 2 room, one small one to the north and a bigger one to the south. Its really not that big – the small room is about 2m square while the larger room is about 4 to 2.4 meters. You wouldn’t expect many people living here – especially looking at the one sleepable area to the NW corner of the larger room – just about 1.5 meter square. And I do know that right now I just made a stupid assumption but it is nice being a bit less critical sometimes…
The dirty area of the house, like most houses is to the south where an oven (F1812) is cut into the wall – there is even a hearth (F1813) associated with this oven in the floor. This dirty area is divided from the rest of the space with a ridge. Right next to the oven to the east is a bench like feature that may have been the place where the ladder was put on (F1811), though this is a bit dubious since there is some business there that is not fully resolved (a lot of animal burrowing). Leaning on the west wall is a bin like feature that belongs to an earlier phase as it cuts the floors. Right next to that is a pillar, nicely plastered, and belongs to the final phase of the building as it is above the floor and the ridge associated with the oven (though I am not saying that they have not been used at the same time – this is just the construction…). Next to this pillar is a bench that was most likely constructed with the pillar – they seem to be bonded with the top most plastering, though both features need to be excavated for us to understand this relationship.
In the central part of the west wall is funny looking post scar - no definite post retrieval pit associated with it though. There was a lot of material around it in collapse form that looked as though they may have belonged to nice relief of some sort… now we’ll never know. The bench I just described and another bench to its north abut it, and the scar continues below so the I think we’ll learn what happened only through further excavation. There is a poorly preserved plastered floor that reaches towards the center of the room, which is associated with the benches.
The platform like feature to the northwest of the room abuts the walls, and is made from a compact clay. It’s surface was not plastered, though there are remnants of thick plastering to the sides and corners of the platform. This platform has a curtain wall that extends quite high and forms a nice partition between the eastern end of the room and itself. This wall is made from the same material the platform was made of – and again needs further excavation to understand its phasing.
The north eastern part of this room is quite a mess, and I do apologize for ones who will work there in the future. We accidentally ate through the plastered floor and went a bit deep down and came across some bin remains that may belong to a much earlier phase of the house. A nice puzzle we left behind – I cant say much about it since I don’t really understand the relationship with the partition wall (F1818) and the bins and the eaten floors…
There were no floors preserved in the central part of the room towards the eastern wall. There is a line of plaster dipping inwards by the wall and also just where the room divides to the northern end where the two bins are. So this area needs further excavation, in the future.
The second room to the north just revealed empty floor surfaces with a clay division in between. Nurcan said she got one pot sherd that could be assigned to level VIII. Now isn’t that exciting! But other than that we just don’t have anything that could tell us where we are in this building. Lots and lots more puzzles to be solved. Well, and that’s it for me and my journal keeping. There are still 3 reports I have to write… and its getting late.
The continuation should come.Entered By: Burcu Tung |
