August 14, 2001

Today our first task was to remove the floor, L3044, of the oven L3003 in the south baulk so that we could expose the rest of the stone wall under it, L3037. We took it off and found that underneath it is a surface that is made of a material that is similar to an eroded white wash L3047. This could either be a fill of a pit or an eroded surface. It stops about 1.5 m north of the south baulk. We removed L3038 in order to try and follow it. On the east side of L3047 coming 10-15 cm west out of the east baulk is a hard material somewhat like mudbrick. This is only a couple of centimeters higher than the wash surface. We are going to wait until tomorrow to see what the differences are. At the south baulk when we were digging we found a carbon sample KT3412. This is consistent with the 5+ other carbon samples we found in L3038.

While digging the southern part of L3038 we dug the northern part up to the oven L3030. Near the oven we found 5 carbon samples all within 75 cm of the oven. The ground underneath is much like the fill above it. I will wait for tomorrow to clean it really well and see if there is a soil change and if there is we will change loci. The amount of carbon present in the fill in this locus leads me to believe that this was probably here during the use of the oven.

Just west of L3038 we took off another layer in L3039 which is the fill above the wall L3037 which is the north south running wall coming out of the south baulk. We found that rocks continue north but are at a lower level. Also pertaining to this wall we found that there are stones below the oven north of the wall L3030. These seem to be lying in line with the wall and because of a similar case of a sloping wall in B4 I believe that these stones may be a continuation of the wall. We may have a hard time finding a solid connection between the two sets of stones because the insertion of the oven may have knocked out some of the rocks in between. We also brought the area west of the wall down about 10 cm without finding much.

We also dug the fill, L3040, of oven L3030 out revealing another ashy fill underneath. The fill underneath, L3041, is coarse and full of small pottery fragments, a much used area. In the fill L3040 we found a conical clay find KT3390 and 2 carbon samples, KT3396 and KT3418.

After digging the fill of the oven we dug the remainder of the northern part of L3024 away and began digging the 2 large pits in that area L3042 and L3043. L3042 turned out to be somewhat square and L3043 we one dug half of in order to see any stratification.