July 31, 2001

S-wall L5045 is becoming a bit of a demon. No matter how much of the surrounding area I cut into or how much I spray, the bloody thing just refuses to continue in any direction. There's a slight chance that after a break it continues in its original orientation (SW-NE) but that's a less than safe bet.

In other news, that sandy/clay material that was abutting wall L5039 and some of L5028 (L5038) was removed today. It was relatively unremarkable save that it was only a few cm thick and formed a perfect corner at its SE-most extent, and the line which may be related to L5045 can be traced to that corner.

The problem right now is the huge glut of "maybes and possiblies" accumulating in the trench and the almost complete lack of answers. Compound this by the fact that the northern architecture may(!) be related to the southern architecture so I can't remove it and the trench can be very frustrating and finding pieces of excavation to do which could reveal answers but probably won't destroy anything is nigh impossible. Thus, at the end of the day we cut two large sections (E-W) in the center of the trench and slightly S of there to try and figure out what's going on and minimize damage. If they don't shed some light (and my preliminary assessment is that they don't) then it may be back to the pick-axe in much of the trench.