August 15, 2000

We start by finishing the articulating of rocks in L1033. Also we swept the L1044 and L1045 South cuts which we had made yesterday, and also the North L104 cut. We sprayed all probes. It seems that there may be only one course of bricks remaining in L1046, there are no lines in the hard-packed soil below. Just in case, we will drop another 20cm in our South probe. Our North probe shows the same result, where the brick line seems to end.

In the Northeast there maybe a corner of one brick sticking out of the wall in L1037, it is hard to see it. In the Southeast corner we have very large and definite bricks. You can see them in the baulk. However, they are very close to the corner and it remains to be seen how useful they will be.

We cut East from yesterday's L1044 probe. It is possible that we started to cut through some mud-bricks, as large chunks were coming out. We will cut flat to see if we can see anything. There are small mudbricks indeed running off at an angle 1.2m from the EB, from the SB Northeasterly direction. We will change loci. These small mudbricks are L1047, the inside of them is L1048. The large brick wall in the very Southeast corner is L1049.

In the oven section in the middle of the East baulk we will make 3 new loci eventually. Today we make L1050 which is the red, circular oven. L1051 may be the black, ashy oven and L1052 will be the possible surface around all that. I dug L1050 out and there was a lot of worn pot sherds.

We cleaned off the top of L1048, L1047 and there are a few lines in L1048 which may be parallel with L1033 edge and the L1047, L1049 bricks.

We cut in both directions from the original L1045 probe.  We went North over to the original North probe and all the way along the wall L1046. Near L1043 stones there is a line exactly parallel and about 15cm wide to the rocks of L1043. This may be mud-brick associated with this sturcture. We cut up until it to see what was below it. The probe doesn't seem to show bricks anywhere except the ones on the surface of L1046, but all the soil around is very hardpacked like L1035. We also cut south from the probe but the dirt under L1035 shows no lines.

We also started to deal with the section hump left over in L1037 up against the wall of L1043. We cut it back and it seems that the pebbles extend over the wall of L1043. Under, at about the same level as the highest point of the rocks is a hardpacked surface of possible brick. The pebbles seem to extend North under the rocks of L1039. All the soil around there is quite blue until you drop down to the level of the oven section, which has an ashy dark hue.