| Entry: | Have been excavating room fill from B53, we have eastern, western and northern wall, so an improvement on B42. Removed several episodes of midden above this building but below B42. It appears that some of this middening activity, which although it lies within B53, is probably contemporary with some of the middening external to the building. Specifically (11369)=(11370 ) and less so (11376)=(11377). I'm suggesting that B53 was backfilled but only up to a certain level and that the top course or two of the eastern wall was exposed and standing when people were disposing of their rubbish here, some deliberately within S257/B53 and some external in S261 but with some also spilling over each way. Potentially analysis of these deposits will firstly determine whether they are 'classically' midden and secondly whether they are related.
We have also uncovered The NE platform in B53 (F1525), plaster a bit messed about by rodent activity, but quite a nice sign that we are getting down into the building. The only downer is that the southern edge of the platform has been truncated by an elongated oval pit running aprox NW/SE which turns at its northern end and runs NE/SW. An unusual shape and possibly cut from a higher level as we noted some differential in the deposit we removed above, (11378). My fear is that it is a grave and as we are so close to the existing surface of the mound that it could potentially be Byzantine. A thought I have no desire to entertain. Alternatively they could be retrieval pits of some kind, an attempt to recover something from beneath the platforms; so still in the Neolithic and everyone's happy. However if it was a Byzantine grave I suppose it would make it very easy to explain the intrusive pottery I mentioned in my last entry!
I have also been having a little think about the initial stages of B42, as we have now completed excavating it. So having removed the earliest thing, which was the wall F826 and all the construction activity related to it I found myself in the midden (11347) trying to imagine the surroundings, was it open, were there other buildings around or was this an extensive midden and such? Today there is Roddy's area overlooking us, which wasn't around back then but perhaps there was a slight rise and this area of midden was open, overlooked even. I was struck by the fact that all our original ideas about the burial with the plastered skull F1517,were that it had gone in pre layout of the platforms, F1501+2 and prior to any sort of activity within the house but we hadn't considered whether the house itself was built!
So checked the matrix to make sure I hadn't lost it, found that there was no direct strategraphic relationship between the burial and the eastern wall, they were both the first things to happen. (It is entirely possible that I may have got this wrong but lets just imagine for a while that I know what I'm doing). So all of a sudden we have the possibility that this burial of a female with a plastered skull was the very first thing to happen, no walls and no privacy; could this have been a very public act? This contrasts to the idea of it being an intimate and private event within a building, within a family.. (Listen to me all inside/outside) Anyway, a public, communal event, possibly laying claim to that piece of real estate, or public due the importance of that person (skull, female or both). I mentioned this to John Swogger earlier today and he said that the reconstruction he did of the burial was without walls so perhaps we were thinking along the same lines?
Whether this is the case or not may require a little more thought, like would it be practical to build a wall, a house with the potential that the burial may be damaged by building works; scaffolding, builders etc, or perhaps as long as it was in the ground nothing else mattered, but some care was taken in burial.
Well it's a thought anyway, that this burial, important as it is, may have been important for more than just that family and carried out in such a manner to reflect that.Entered By: Simon McCann |
