This consists of 58 units removed individually including a few arbitrary layers. It is a mixture of plaster/marl layers and moulded layers made of a light, chaffy material, plus a few mortar-type deposits and several covering layers which appear to have wrapped around the object at some time. By 1998 season the feature had been truncated horizontally at the E and vertically at the S. As a result it has been extremely complicated taking it apart and no defintive conclusion can be made as to what it was. In fact, it seems that part of it is still in the ground at the W end, and this may hold the key, it suggests that the feature may have been a bin, and that what I have excavated is a complex bin-roof with a small work platform on it, which had all collapsed. However, it may indeed have been an animal head moulding or something similar, but it does not make sense as one now.
What is clear is that a number of elements were deliberately moulded into shape and that the material is much less dense and more chaffy than normal brick. A great deal of layering of deposits took place, suggesting either a gradual building of a moulding or continous alteration/repairs to a moulding or a bin.
In the centre, below a few layers, was a semi-circular, flat white platform (3634) with an upright marl 'back stop' (3399) suggesting a grinding platform or work area. This could have been on the roof of a bin, the possible wall of which is at the SW edge and a possible other wall survives on the N wall at the E, in the fill. However, we still do not know what it really was. It should be noted that a thin orange-brown render was found on the upper surface of parts of (3300) base plaster at both E and W ends and that a smear of similar/same material is adhering to the S face of the N wall of the room opposite F.279.
Unit (3300) was a plaster wrapping layer which ran horizontally, below most of the units, up the N face and over the top of the moulded horn-shaped unit (3394). However, on the S face it rather dissapeared, being overlain by several smaller deposits of plaster and bricky soil. At the W end deposits continued beneath (3300), but the whole thing fitted neatly, into the curve of (3953), the possible bin wall and no stray fragments suggested major breakage of either structure to accommodate the other. One interpretation is that (3300) lined the roof of a bin, and the whole superstructure, with (3300) at the base, has fallen within the bin area. However, excavation lower down is required to test this.
NB; (3300) is not a simple unit but probably several layers mixed up. |
