Daily Trench Journal

Area D

Trench 8

June 11, 2005

E.O.

Today we had one main large project, which was to bring down the baulk between D8 and D10. We are doing this because we are tying to get a full exposure of any and all walls that are there. While this was going on we continued to work in the areas where we do not have surfaces, this includes 91, 88, 89 and 78.

In L88 we pulled some pottery including one possibly reconstructable pot. We found what appeared to be a partial circle in the soil when we scraped this locus flat. When we went further down and tried to articulate this we ended up only having a few areas where there was thin (7-10cm) curved lines of what appears to be burned mudbrick. Because we still do not really know what is going on in this locus it is a top priority for investigation tomorrow.

In L87 we went down knowing that there would possibly be more bones of L90. We did not find any more bones but we did find another course of brick under where the bones had been. This course of brick matches up perfectly with another course of L70. This means that the bones were completely within the wall. They may have been partially exposed by the wall collapsing at one point. I believe that at one point the entire body was buried in the wall but that over the years erosion caused this wall to slump and the body to fall out. The body was then washed away as the tepe eroded. The place where the skull was found was only 15 cm below topsoil.

One priority for today was to articulate and take out L 81, which I believed was mostly exposed. It turns out that this is wrong because we ended up tracing the locus all the way to the east baulk. Part of it was visible in the corner section of the east baulk so I decided to expand the extension of the trench south one meter. When we did this we were able to find more of this locus until it was an oval shape. This locus is not flat but a decline at it moves east. This could simply be from the changing shape of the tepe. While at first the stones make it seem like it might be a hearth there is no burned material, either ash or signs of fire on the material in the locus. This material includes worked stones, most of which appear to have been broken so that there are edges as opposed to smooth stone, and pottery. It is not flat enough to have been a floor, the stones are not smooth and some of the pottery is laid with sharp edges facing up. My plan was to clean this then photo and remove it. I was unable to do this because it became very very windy at the end of the day.

Bekir also spent some time with me talking about what exactly could have been going on in this trench and some implications for ubaid in this area. I will include notes from this in my weekly summary.