| Entry: | We've been rained off today and, although its stopped now, walking on site will just trash the archaeology at the moment so I've time to do a longer diary entry. We have stopped digging in space 90 and taking space 279 down instead. This is another external space and after cleaning (12968) we removed a thin, discrete midden spread (12970) which overlies (12976). To the south, truncated by the large, late building foundation trench is a pit that was partially excavated last year in the 10m strip to the east. The edges at the top are fairly difficult to see so we have had to chase the cut up and, this morning, before it started chucking it down with rain, the pit extended under (12976) so we will have to remove that layer first. This is actually good because it gives us a stratigraphic sequence for the pit which is must be earlier than (12970) and this unit produced a substantial quantity of pottery. This means that the pit (upper fill 12971 and lower fill 12972) should be quite tightly dated. The fills in the pit do contain compound layers but they are not finely laminated suggesting that the fills went in fairly rapidly. I think that the pit will therefore prove extremely useful since it is a discrete, probably well dated and rich deposit for the recovery of material. I know that the faunal team have a lack of osteometric data from the later Neolithic levels and I have seen quite a lot of anatomically measureable bone in the fills so I think it would be a good unit for the specialists to have a look at. I'll mention it on the next priority tour but I think the specialists are starting to get a bit overwhelmed with the amount of midden we are digging this year.
The pit is still going down and soon we will have to stop digging it as it will go lower than the 1.20m allowed for safety reasons. The equvilent unit excavated in 2005 is (10386).Entered By: LY |
