Weekly Trench Summary

Week 5

Area C

Trench 2 Sounding

June 18, 2005

This arbitrary sounding was sunk into the southwest corner of Trench C2 to investigate the extent of occupation through time on the western side of the tepe. While the 5x5m C1 trench appears to be late 3rd millennium BC, we wished to explore whether or not earlier occupations, such as the ‘Ubaid and Late Chalcolithic found elsewhere on the tepe, also exist here. This sounding has been excavated by two people this season, Jeanne N and myself (Marie Marley). I began the first locus (2163) of the sounding, Jeanne took over for her last week and then I took over again from her.

The following are the high points of this sounding as excavated by Jeanne and interpreted from her notes. A mudbrick wall cut through the sounding on a roughly west to east axis. This wall did not continue on for more than 20cm. Below that was a locus of ash and ashy fill, very dark, L2165. From this point on there was not a great deal of interest in the findings as there was very little cultural remains found.

This changed during my excavation with L2173. Apparently for almost the last meter we had been coming down through a mudbrick wall. The earth is so dark and wet that this was not originally evident in the sounding. It was noticed however by coming down on a single course stone wall running on an approximately north south axis through the sounding. This "wall" was probably more of a demarcation or boundary line along the mudbrick wall. The mudbrick wall is to the west of the stone wall and the stones may have been placed there to demark the mudbrick wall. On the other side from this is fill. Looking at the southern, western, and northern baulks, the wall appears to have been preserved to approximately 1m in height, but in the western baulk this was cut in the middle by a pit. The wall appears to be constructed in a similar way to one found in Area I (the step trench) by Ellie. It has alternating bricks in green, brown and red. Ellie’s also had reeds showing up as streaks of white. White streaks did appear in a higher level of fill, but nothing that we found in the mudbrick wall. Perhaps due to extreme wetness of soil. Ellie’s wall dates to the late Chalcolithic.

So questions for next week from the sounding revolve around exploring and removing this wall from the sounding. What is the extent (vertically) of the wall? Is there a foundation? Are there associated surfaces?

Stay tuned!