Weekly Summary

Area D, Trench 5

B Uzel, N Luby

July 2 to July 8, 2004

During the 2002 season trench D5 revealed contexts at its southern end – an oven in the east section and domestic architecture in the south, except for a human burial in the NW corner. The domestic architecture and the oven were dated to the Ubaid period and from July 2 – July 4 material was shifted to reach the plastic sheeting that covered these contexts. On removal of the plastic the trench was divided into arbitrary cleaning loci reflecting the north-south split in context versus fill. The recorded features from 2002, L5140 and L5139 (mud brick walls) were removed, and the oven was separated into three new loci – a central core (5156), fill (5155) and the "walls" (5157). Three pits were excavated – 5162, 5168 and 5180 and the oven was first cleaned and then sectioned to provide information on the layers in the central core. The "walls" were considered to be arbitrary and the pottery recovered from the excavation of 5156 suggested the oven was not Ubaid but later.

The aim for week two is to concentrate on the southern portion of the trench and assess whether an older phase of Ubaid domestic context underlies that from the 2002 season. A secondary goal is to understand why the northern portion of the trench has been so poor in revealing contexts and to create a srategy to overcome this.