August 12, 2001

The day was spent clarifying the building, I now feel it's safe to call it that, in the SE corner of the trench (as defined by walls L5045 on the W and N, L5061 on the S. The inner area was dug down the surface level (L5063) approximately in areas which had not previously reached that level (using fill above floor locus 5058), which produced more extensive deposits of the fine white/gray ash with clear fiber impressions. Towards the E, a strangely shaped piece of pottery was uncovered, but left in situ and photographed. My guess is it's probably a pedestal base, but we'll have to wait to find out.

On the N of the outside of wall, a roughly 0.8m x 0.8m portion of L5060 (defined as area abutting wall, outside) was dug down to approximately the level of the interior surface and uncovered a group of three good-sized (~15-20 cm) circular basalt stones which I am presuming are fishnet weights. They are resting at almost an exact level of the interior surface which makes me believe they are associated with the wall and the surface, probably a place where the fish net was kept outside of the building. Also, more of the fibrous white/gray ash was uncovered, but in no where near the levels seen on the interior....

...which leads me to a little theory. At some point in antiquity, the mudbrick structure had a thatch/reed roof (with possibly some larger beams supporting). This roof caught on fire (for whatever reason, the large hearth/oven inside the room, a city-wide fire, an razing of the building or town, or some other intentional reason) and was subsequently (or in the deliberate cases, immediately preceding) abandoned. As the ceiling burned, most of the ash fell into the building while some blew away. Interestingly, I have found some similar deposits (though very little, in comparison) in some of the northern areas of the trench. Whether this is fallout from this structure, another contemporary structure, or entirely unrelated (possibly related to ash pit L5047 in that portion of the trench) is unknown, and given how near we are to the end of the dig season, may remain that way until next season.

Continuing on one route of this theory, though, most of the trench above the level of the SE structure, and in all cases above the surface level there, had silty and sandy build-up, indicating to me a period of disuse. I'm thinking that whatever this phase is, it was destroyed by fire (one way or another) then went into disuse for a period before the area was used again. It will be interesting to see if such a disconnect can be found in the pottery.

Back to the work of the day, because of a very difficult (thin ash lens "lining") to excavate pit (L5055) and the risk inherit to excavating the sides of a mudbrick wall in order to see courses, we took a half-trench (the northern half of the trench is unclear at the moment) plan shot, which we will hopefully do again assuming things don't go badly in said excavations and more is learned about the structure. After the shot, we spent the end of the morning working on the pit and taking an inside soft layer immediately abutting wall L5045 on the E off.