August 12, 2001

Today we started off by defining the pits that we found yesterday. The first was L3029 which we found before coming to of the northern baulk and disappearing under L3024. After digging off L3024 yesterday we can see that the rest of the pit continues east and returns to the northern baulk. The eastern edge is hard to define because it isn't cleanly cut but we can roughly make out the line of the pit. The next pit is just south east of L3024. this is a large pit at least 1.5 m wide. We found this under L3024 and while digging more off of L3024 north east of the pit we found that the pit is at that level too and continues east running into the north baulk about 1 m west of the east baulk. We made that section of L3024 the same locus as the pit that it is part of, L3042. The soil in this locus is mainly a fine ashy loam. Coming out of the north baulk right where the pit L3042 meets the baulk we found some stones that seem to be at the top of the pit. Whether these are part of a feature that is cut by the pit or if they are part of the pit is unknown at this point. The third pit is just south of L3042 and is named L3043. This is an oblong shaped pit and was also found when L3024 was being cut down. The south and east sides of this pit are still under L3024. There might be 1 or 2 more pits next to these but it is hard to tell because the area is so chewed up by animal burrows. These pits are probably why L3018 does not continue underneath L3024 like we expected. If this is true we might be able to find remnants of L3018 farther east of the pits. There is one more pit that we identified today but will name and define tomorrow. This is a pit N of L3025 in the NW quadrant of the area. It is underneath L3018 but cuts the entire north part of L3025 and continues into the baulk. We checked on the day plans of C2 from last year and saw that this pit is the reason that L3025 does not continue in the section of the shared baulk between the two trenches. This makes L3025 make a little more sense.

While looking at the pits and L3018 our attention was drawn to the cobbles that are present in the SW of L3024, the SE of L3018 and the S of L3025. These, like I have said before, look to be continuous and slopping downhill. If this is true it means that these pebbles could be an eroded surface from higher up in the area or that they could be a path going down hill. Right now I can't tell.

While cleaning up one of the workers scrapped a little bit off the hard brick in the south of L3024 which comes out under the section of the oven feature L3030. This, right now, is classified as a lower part of the oven because it is a continuation of the N-S running wall of the oven, just 25 cm or so lower. Here the worker found a carbon sample which was very well preserved, KT3358. This should be able to date the wall.

Farther south we dug a bit more of L3039 off the top of L3037 reveling more rocks and some more of that eroded sand stony stuff from yesterday in the same place. South west of that we took off the last bit of cobbles of L3027 bringing it down to L3034.

At the end of the day a little corner of the oven L3030 was knocked off and we were able to see inside. It seems that the hard clay of this locus is a cap on top of packed dirt and underneath that could be another hard clay or mud which can be seen just sticking out, running north, of the bottom of L3030 about 20 cm lower.

Also because of some discrepancies in the nature of the printing of the day plan we found some measurement problems with the area and redrew the eastern side of the trench. Therefore it may look, proportion wise, a little different than previous day plans.