| Entry: | As usual the frustration of not knowing has subsided as the archaeology again explains itself as we take things apart piece by piece. The frustration was mainly due to the presence of sub wall structures where there 'should' have been nice straight walls bellow building 44 leading to nice floor/platform etc deposits. Anyway what appears to have happened is that building 56 (our new older building) was abandoned and a large dump of mixed midden and building material Deposit 11670 was rapidly used to fill it in. Even here care seems to have been taken to dump the more substantial mud brick/demolition material around the edges of the old building, perhaps in preparation for the next deposit, basically a foundation wall F. 2053 (11671, 11672 and 11673) this wall partially cut into 11670 and was widest at the south east. Similar preparations appear to have been constructed along the south and west in preparation for the building of the walls of building 44.
The construction of these foundations around the edges of the building space was followed by a series of dump/leveling deposits in the more central area of the room to be with again more compact mud brick like material used around the edges of the building (dumps 11662 11663 with ash spread 11664). Little evidence of activity/compaction during this dumping stage was apparent although a post 11668/11669 appeared to have been inserted within dump 11670. Leveling deposit 11652 contained the bear stamp seal and if placed deliberately may have marked the end of the backfilling episode and the beginning of activity within the building space as both the surface of upper leveling deposits 11416 and 11652 both showed evidence of scorching by fires/hearths, respectively 11450 and 11661. It is at this point I believe the burial sequence was started, and while I suspect the earlier burials cut through 11652 we could not prove it, although they most definitely cut leveling deposit 11416. 8 burials have now been lifted and each appear to be in individual cuts although these were difficult or well nigh impossible to see, there was also a myriad of disarticulated bones within and around the burials. Each burial was given a feature number and each skeleton and cut received its own unit number, we would liked to have allocated each burial a separate fill number, but because we could not differentiate between cuts the 'burial soil' got a generic number 11608. Apart from that building 56 looks great!!Entered By: RR |
