Daily Trench Journal

Area D

Trench 5

July 16, 2002

Today it looks as though the trench is really come to shape up as whole in terms of understanding the contexts and their relation.

For example, there was a soil color change over a large portion of the E-baulk, in L5101, and nearby what looked to be a floating fragment of an oven wall. But today we got deep enough that it all came together to be revealed as a very large oven, ~2.5m diameter and slightly ovoid. At the moment it even appears to be contemporary with the Ubaid contexts to its W and S.

Similarly, in the central-W a poorly understood area of soil texture change, L5085, has revealed itself to be a pit and combined with the other pits and possible surface tumble in the N and NE helps explain the jumbly mix in that region of the trench.

The only sizable region where basic understanding still seems to be lacking is the central region of the trench where in L5103 there is a large concentration of mudbrick but a good wall has yet to be uncovered. With the concentration of mudbrick I am encouraged to believe there is a wall there somewhere, but it is still possible that it all, in fact, is collapse, albeit relatively well organized collapse.