July 14, 2004

We continued with the HAP process collecting a soil sample of the floor material from 5185 for floatation and then sieving out the rest through a one quarter inch sieve.

In the SW corner of the trench we had used locus 5169 to refer to the potential floor layer that could be seen in section under fill 5164. However, as we noted yesterday, the material in 5164 and below may well have been leveled during the process of construction of the domestic architecture excavated in 2002. having searched for a coherent sign of 5169 we decided that we would be working through secondary material until we came down below the foundation material of the 2002 architecture. We therefore assigned a new cleaning locus of 5190 to bring this material down to the level of 5167 in the SE corner of the trench. Having excavated 5190 we noted an area of lighter material (5192) and we will clean and spray tomorrow to assess this further.

In the SW corner we began to lower 5167 and revealed a floor (5194) similar in material, consistency and slope to floor 5185. 5194 also abutted a wall feature (5193) flush with southern baulk.

While clearing 5194 we came down onto a vertical layer of mud brick defining the pit 5180. We took a sample of this mud brick and excavated a small sounding to provide a section for 5164 and 5194 and lower layers and to assess whether 5180 was any deeper.

While excavating 5174 by 5cm to ward the south baulk we discovered a large pot, possibly an Ubaid period cooking vessel, that was partially excavated. One possibility is that it is resting on a surface connected with wall 5183.