Daily Trench Journal

Area D

Trench 8

June 2, 2005

E.O.

Last night it rained once again and so this morning parts of the trench were still damp. Today this actually hindered my being able to see the walls we have marked out yesterday. The nails we had places in the corners of the walls were still there. I strung the nails with string to outline the walls. I did this to make it easier for me to see and then measure for the day plan and also so that we would know where to be careful when we are walking. I also was able to finally assign locus numbers to each wall. The loci are as follows.

L70 N-S oriented wall, one course of brick. There is visible plaster against the eastern side of the wall.

L71 E-W oriented wall, the eastern end meets with L72 in a corner. Two courses of brick.

L72 N-S oriented wall, one course. The western edge of this wall abuts the eastern edge of the pit L58.

L73 Two courses of brick running almost parallel to the western baulk. They match up with bricks in L65 and L74.

L74 Four bricks, potentially three courses of a wall which align with L73 and L65.

L75 E-W oriented wall, two courses of brick, in the southern section of the trench.

L76 N-S oriented wall near the east baulk, one course, meets with the wall in L75 in a corner.

L77 N-S oriented wall against the west baulk, one course, meets with the wall in L75 in a corner.

We began new fill loci, the first of which is L69. This locus is 2.5m long (N to S) and an even 2 meters wide. The guys brought this locus down 5 cm and then troweled it flat. We did not see anything in this area but we needed to bring the rest of the trench down before we can justify going further down in this area.

The rest of the day was spent straightening the baulks. Bekir and I completely restrung the eastern baulk and re cut it. This actually lengthened the width of the trench in the southern section by about 25cm.