Daily Trench Journal

Area D

Trench 8

May 25, 2005

Today began with two loci in need of excavation and completion. These were L55 and L58. L55 is the possible rock foundation of L17 from last season (L51 from this season). One of the workmen began articulating the rocks first using a small pick and then a trowel and brush. The area had been pedestalled previously so it was easy to follow the rocks to the bottom and determine where the bottom was. Once this was finished Bekir and I analyzed what had been exposed and were able to identify the slump versus the original wall foundation. We removed the slump stones and then photographed the area we had determined was the original stonewall foundation. Once this was done we were able to completely remove the locus and bring it down to the lever of L56, which it was within and now on top of.

L58 is the large pit in the northern section of the trench. This pit, which is roughly cylindrical, when completely dug was .66m deep. The pit has hard packed sides filled with a very soft dark ash fill (10YR 3/1 Very Dark Grey). The top of the pit, excavated on May 24th, contained very large chunks of bone and pottery fragments. The deeper the pit went the fewer items there were. In the bottom 10cm there were three grindstones. Along with the large amounts of bone and pottery multiple small finds came out of the pit. These included: two spindle whorls or loom weights (identification uncertain), a fragment of a ceramic beer strainer, a round stone, and three grind stones. The puzzling thing about this trench is the precise date for it. Many of the sherds pulled out are ubaid. It appears that there were at lease two different ubaid pots, one white painted with black, one red painted with black. The other pieces, when analyzed in the field, were inconclusive. There needs to be only one piece of a later dating pot to make this an EB pit since the date of the pit cannot be earlier than the latest piece of pottery. These bags have been marked for Lynn to analyze. When we continued to bring down the area around the top of the pit we were pulled out pieces from the EB and later.

In order to help preserve any context from around the top of the pit I split loci 56, which had been the entire trench, into two parts. L56 is continuing in the east but the western section that is against the deep baulk where there is no possibility for contamination with topsoil the way there is on the eastern baulk. One of the reasons for doing this was that the workmen pulled out a piece of painted pottery which to me looked to be ubaid however Bekir said that at best it was very late ubaid. At the end of the day we began by bringing the southern part of loci 59 down 15 cm.