Daily Trench Summary

Area D

Trench 5

August 6, 2002

With the assistance of bone specialist Andrew we are now beginning to uncover the human remains in the far NW of the trench. This is going slower than hoped, however, due to large amounts of animal bones in the area and the generally strange positioning of the skeleton and is tendency to flake away with the slightest pressure, especially in the skull area. However, things are slowly proceeding and we may be able to get it mostly articulated for the planned plan shot on Thursday.

The rest of the focus in the trench has been on the NE large ash pit L5116 which is turning out to be bigger and deeper than I originally imagined. However, as the ash is more concentrated near E-central oven L5111 and we never really found said oven’s northern wall, I believe the pit actually cut the oven and part of the extreme ashy area is actually ash pulled out from the oven itself. The pottery in the oven, on preliminary examination, appears to date it to the 3rd millennium and/or Late Chalcolithic.

Finally we worked on the central plaster-lined pit L5122, which, contrarily, turned out to be smaller and shallower than expected. As it expected it was cut in the E by pit L5116.

Plans for tomorrow are to remove the edge of pit L5116 to flatten the area out to below the level of the bottom of the plaster-lined pit and attempt to find a continuation of the more southerly Ubaid surfaces. Hopefully we’ll uncover these and be able to sufficiently uncover them for good use in the plan shot. If not, it may have to be postponed a day. Andrew will continue working on the burial.