Daily Trench Journal

Area D

Trench 8

May 28, 2005

This morning began by sweeping the North West corner of the trench with a large whisk broom and then spraying the area down with water. When we did this we could clearly see four courses of bricks (Wall L65). Bradley believes that this is the large wall which runs around the tepe. They saw this wall in the step trench and again in several other trenches including E2 which is close to my trench. To the east of L65 is an area which seems to be a multi layered floor (L66). Using a trowel Bekir was able to pop small section off and then in the flake we could see up to 5 layers. Whether the floor and the wall connect is still unclear. In the area to the east of that we thought that we saw several other walls but when we brought the area down 5cm we could no longer see it.

Wall L65 is cut as it goes into the western baulk by an ash pit. This pit, L60, when excavated contained only two pieces of pottery and no bone or lithic material. IN addition the pit shows up at a downward angle in the baulk. This makes me believe that this was not a garbage pit but a pit full or material which burned and then slumped. The area to the south and east of L60 appeared to be on its own loci of fill, distinct from the surrounding fill. It was full of sherds and small well rounded stones. I excavated this area as its own locus (L61). Once we reached a point where the part of large fill loci L56 was on level with the floor L66 where the two loci abut one another I decided to change the loci (New Loci L62) because L56 continued the entire length of the trench as so would not provide any good context for the floor.

L63 is another ashy pit just to the south of L60. It at first appeared to be related to the pit above it, L30, but when it was completely excavated we could see in the baulk that there had been a definite layer of non ashy fill between them though the dimensions are still the same. Against the east baulk sharply angled downwards towards the east is a small cracked surface area, L67. This area has some burnt mud brick next to it and appears to have been burn itself at some point.