| Entry: | Full team, except the workmen who continued to help set up the tent over trench 5 and started at trench 6. They were also engaged in fencing the mound. Weather warm and sunny, gentle wind. The tent actually helps a lot in seeing the structures. Jonathan and Catrina arrived today and together with Shahina we discussed the trenches.
In trench 5, Naoise and Helen continued cleaning skeleton 13705 ("Tracey"). We tried hard to spot a cut or infill above the yet unexposed upper body, but were not able to see any. With the help of Basak, we thus dug down to fully expose the body using unit 13707, with which we mainly removed the loose soil that covers the skeleton. It seems to be embedded in the hard light grey surfaces we exposed with unit 13703.
Also feature 2400, the grave cist, sits in that soil. Nick and Christoph cleaned it and its sorroundings and took a photo.
Close to the N profile, an oval pit (unit 13710 for the fill, 13711 for the cut) appeared, was photographed and drawn.
S of the grave cist, Christoph cleaned another pit and greyish square spots.
In trench 6, we cleaned skeleton 13802, took photographs and Ezra drew a plan with Basak's help. Although the Istanbul team as well as Burcu agreed with us that we have plaster in the SW corner, Shahina, Jonathan and Catrina told us that this is a special natural phenomenon in Catal. I find this really disappointing and still hard to believe.
N of the stone structures, a perfectly rectangular EW-oriented mudbrick structure enclosing a fill appeared. Again on top of this, we found the pseudo-plaster, so it now looks as if the SW-corner skeleton is historic, too. Only the plastered mudbrick wall at the N profile remains a candidate for EC now. We use unit 13702 to further expose structures in the whole area with the exception of unit 13703, the 3mx3m area at the skeleton. As we do not have the time to excavate a historic cemetery, trench 6 will be abandoned after the necessary documentation. We therefore stopped the construction of a tent there.
Documentation work proves quite difficult for me to delegate and supervise, since with the exception of Ingmar and Christoph, the students are still reluctant to just grab a unit number and start to fill the sheets. And before teaching something, I have to do the task once myself to find possible pitfalls (such as the transparency paper which has no lines and matching it with the millimetric paper we got creates errors due to expansion of both the transparency and the millimetric paper). Instead of spending the first two days listening to abstract in-houseinstructions, I should have gone to trench at watch them doing their work.
Especially the turkish students have problems understanding me, partly due to my and their lack in technical vocabulary. Supervising many documentation processes at one time today meant that I was constantly interrupted by questions. Maybe field schools should be held on flat settlements only, where ewvery feature sits safely in sterile deposits, whereas tells, where every mistake destroys information on yet another manmade deposit, require a 1:1 trainer - trainee relationship?Entered By: ER |
