Daily Journal

Area D, Trench 9

July 18, 2004

M. Eppihimer

Now that the full extent of the oven has been determined, I am working to lower the platform around it to the level of the rest of the trench. Keeping in mind our hypothesis that mud and bricks are packed around the oven, we are leaving a ring around it, which will be dug separately from the rest of the platform.  A reddish brown color predominates, but the ring around the oven is more brown/brick-like. L 21 is the general platform area including the small patch of L17 pebble layer, which we could not trace any further back to the S-SW because it had already been cut through. L 22 is the ring around the oven. If the section is to be trusted, the entire platform save the immediate vicinity of the oven is fill.

TO the E of the oven, a line of orange bricks 1.2 m long but only 8 cm wide – runs NW to SE.

After taking off 10 to 15 cm in L21 and observing no change, we are going down 10 more centimeters. The KT’s have been separated. For now we are keeping the area between the orange line of bricks and the oven untouched, hoping we can come at the bricks from the side and see if/how deep they are. The removal of 15 to 20 cm from L22 around the oven has exposed the ring of burnt bricks that form the innermost wall of the oven structure. One measure 10 by 10 by 20 cm.

The orange line of bricks has become a 5 cm thick layer of orange bricks that slopes downhill from the SW to NE. We are following this by exposing it and then popping it off (with progress photos of course) so we will know its extent in the negative. Beneath the bricks is a more ashy and loose soil. After the area under L21 was swept, a line of ash extended north from the area of ash exposed under the bricks to the east of the oven. Other soil distinctions were observed and sketched in the next day’s plan.