Journal / Summary:C-1-2000-Journal

July 21, 2000

We are working on Area C Trench 1.  We measured our 5x5 on the side of the hill.  There are only a few prickly weeds were in this section.  The work men are digging them out.  I am working with Lokman and Ercan.  We are removing some top soil.  We started at the southeast corner to remove topsoil.  Then we hit upon some hard packed soil only about 8cm below the surface.  It is flat and follows the plane of the slope.  We only had to dig about 2cm on the downhill side.  It is more of a crumbly dried mud surface.  They are sweeping it.  On the southeast corner we seem to have dug into it without initial problem.  There are trees growing out of it, roots.  This second surface is locus 1001, the topsoil is 1000.

After Carpus for breakfast, we started to dig the southeast corner of 1001.  The dry crumbly dirt came apart pretty easy.  We dug a quarter of the trench and looked for finds.  We found a piece of basalt bowl, kt 1006 in this southeast quarter.  And there were some interesting pottery rims.

Once we broke the top of 1001, the top pieces were held together tight so we had to break them up to search for sherds.  But under there was more dirt until another solidish surface.  We will clear to there to determine if it is a new locus.  We got through some of the dirt to another crumbly white surface.  In the southeast corner were some small smashed pieces of pottery.  We found a snail shell and a funny rock shaped like a nail.  We will probably crush through this level.

Tomorrow, I think we should continue digging the corner so we can find a section on the other parts of the trench.

July 22, 2000

We did Munsell on yesterday's loci.  We are continuing for 10 cm in the quarter that we dug yesterday in the Southeast and we couldn't find too much pottery, only one or two pieces but there are many in the southeast corner on the bulk.  But it doesn't seem like anything different.  Yesterday there were some pottery at the same spot also.  We sound some sandstone at the southwestern corner of our quarter, so we are now cleaning up, probably it is a different layer.   We munselled the sandstone piece and it is 2.5Y 5/2 Greyish brown with some black pieces in it.

I found an acorn in the middle of our 2x2 locus, 1001.  We cleaned the southeast 2x2 and there are a lot of rocks in the southwest corner.  This we will clean more closely.  There was found during digging a very different sort of stone with silver and gold and black colored flakes in it.  Then we retook our measurements from yesterday in order to use the new level.  Then we started our workmen on the North side, we started with the Northeast corner and decided to cut all the way west from there.  We called this all part of locus 1001.  The East side is pretty much the same.  The West side is hard to tell if it is the same because we cut it fast.  The chunks of dried dirt are big.  There are also some big rocks.  We only went down about 5cm on the West and 8cm on the East.  We will start to clear the Southwest corner.  We are taking it a little slower to look at where the rock pile will lead us.

We think there is something different in the Southwest corner it is so loose and the color is different, we will probably open a new locus for this but until we clean and decide we will collect the pottery as a new KT#1020 in the same locus 1001.  It is probably a pit.  And there are some rocks around it.  We will leave them because they may be related with our rock feature that we couldn't describe yet.

I am curious that we have seen about 6 roots, of large diameter, but there are no trees on this hill.  All the roots were buried, perhaps sprouting those prickle bushes on the surface.

Now we have cleaned most of 1001 away to get to the similar 1002 in the North part of the trench.  The action now is in the Southwest corner, where our rocks have expanded out almost circular.  There seems to be a different sand texture inside the rock circle.  We will measure the bottom of 1001.

We dug through the scattered rocks and they don't seem to continue, so we counted that as the same locus, 1001.  That brought the trench near level and clean.  Next we thought to work off another 10-15cm off the East, uphill side.  We were working North to South when we found a large, fat group of broken pottery and some large bones, so we will clean.  The pottery is in the middle.  Then we worked from South to North.  The soil close to the middle made a funny hollow sound when we hit it and it felt more damp, or soft, it is hard to tell.  We left it to "dry" for tomorrow and we will tell at that point.  We should also clean up the broken pot and give it a KT number.

July 23, 2000

We have the pot smash in the middle of the East side and the rock garden in the middle of the South side.  We started the day by dropping the area between the rock garden and the pot smash.  And also taking out the crumbly topsoil on the North half.  There are a few more pieces of pottery around the smash.  There is a larger piece 1/4 of the way from the west on the North bulk.  It is buried deep and has a wavy side.  We found some bone on the North side.

We took a photo of the East smash.  Then we sent our workmen working on leveling the West side of the trench.  We want to end up with a flat surface on the downhill (West side) that we can clean.   There continued to be large pieces of pottery strewn about our trench.  We just found a large piece on the west side.   We will create a step trench.  The rock garden which Elvan is clearing appears to extend North.  The funny thing is we find few rocks directly East.  There are a lot of medium size rocks around the big rocks.  To me that says the rocks were placed there on purpose.

The solid in the downhill (NW) side is beginning to be a little less packed.  Some different coloration on the deepest part near the middle of the entire trench on the uphill side of our flat trench.  On the North wall there are some large pieces of pottery we have kept in place.  I will open 1003 on the rock garden because there are so many rocks around.  Just West of the rock garden are a lot of small sherds and stones.

We started to go towards the middle and there were some more large sherds and some rocks, and we removed the big rock in the middle.  We got a nice level surface down at the bottom.  Then we started towards the rock garden.  First we wanted to level from the Southwest corner along the wall to the rock garden.  There were some nice rims so we opened KT 1029.  We will go until I think it was a new locus (1003), the rock garden.  Also we leveled the center to the higher step.  The trench is on two level steps.  In the southeast corner between the rock garden and the pottery smash is very long and has a nice complete rim, which may connect the two.  It seems a nice pot and I want to dig it up.

July 24, 2000

We decided to level the NE corner with the Western half with a big pick.  For this area we will use small hand picks because there might be some more pottery smash.  These 2 areas will be collected as L1002 and with the KT 1031.

We decided to open a new locus for the SE corner because there might be something different between the pot smash and rock garden.  If these two are related, the section between them should be a different locus.

Now the workers are removing the dirt in the NE corner and we found some white plaster in locus 1004.  But it is not very clear.  With all the pottery there, it is probably a surface.  We found a piece of lithics there also.  There is stone pottery sitting there also.  But we think the soil is the same with the locus 1002.  We found a pot sherd, thin fine fabric, probably late in this context.

In the NE corner we couldn't find any more pot smashes but the pottery pieces are bigger.  In the SE corner we cut a little section and we saw the white material there.  It doesn't look like a surface but there is a probability.  We found a rock when we leveled the NE corner.

Okay there was nothing special on the North side, so we continued to dig from the North to the South in the middle adjacent to the smash and towards the rock garden.  We have also started to dig in towards the rock garden.

As we work towards 1004 in the middle a lot of pottery started to appear about the same time as the white particles.  It is very similar to those I found in the Southeast corner in 1004 before I stopped digging there.  We will change this locus to be, in the middle of 1004 also.

We will make 1004 the Southeast corner until the white stuff in elevation, thus it will be everything on our pseudo surface.  Then the white stuff, a potential surface will be a new locus.  The sectioning of the rock garden has not turned anything up yet. We started to go to South from North we are trying to find the other edge of the white stuff.

After breakfast we started clearing the surface.  I put this red rock that looked like the inside of a brick in its own kt in 1036.  We had found a bigger piece but it was lost.  We are also sweeping the floor.

We are now cutting through the rock garden from the West.  But still there is nothing in the section.  And we are trying to level the 1004.  We are following the white plaster and trying to level it except the pottery smashes there.  We decided everything on the white plaster will be collected in L1004.  So if it is a surface here, it won't get mixed.

In the section that we are cutting through the rock garden, we saw some white pieces all distributed irregularly.   We cut the rock garden! (Peter is very sad.)  We will clean L1004 and we couldn't find any more pot smashes.  So after cleaning this we will take a photo and continue digging.  There are some reddish spots in the West side of the trench.

We found a C14 ash sample but we didn't take the sample yet.  There is a piece of pottery (round) near to the C14 sample.  We will also take an elevation but we cannot do that before taking the sample. (We don't have aluminum foil).

As the rock garden was being removed, I cried.  We found one bone underneath.  Long live the rock garden.  This is a day of infamy.

The rock garden (L1003), and the smashes 1004 will be closed soon.  The elevated Southeast corner will become 1005 on account of the white flakes.  We will cut over towards the pots in order to have them come out easier.

We are now digging 1005.  (Under white plaster pieces).  Then we will level these.  We started to find some reddish soil.  So we will clean it up.

While digging Eastward under what used to be 1003, the rock garden, we saw a portion of reddish dirt.  It is only distinguishable when scraped, but when brushed it looks the same as everything else.  We canceled KT1044 because we decided to leave it there.  We found some other pot sherds around that area.

July 25, 2000

We have only a rise in the Southeast corner- where we took the pot smashes from yesterday.  That is L1005.  There was a little reddish dirt when we scrapped on the top just west of the nice rimmed pot.  We will flatten 1005 and clean the entire flat trench to look for some change.  Where we cleared 1005 on the North side of the current rise (middle of the East side), we have some pot smashes all level, and level with the carbon sample.  We removed the carbon sample from L1006, Kt1045.  And it's elevation is 92.40.  in the L1006 there are some pots, mortar, pestle and there are also some rocks in the western side of these.  It may be a surface.  We will call it Elvan's Kitchen.  We will level the SE corner and we will check if there is pottery under that part.  In the SE side we found some more pieces of the nice rimmed pot that we took out yesterday (KT1042,L1004).  We saw a little white plaster but it doesn't look like a line.  And we are digging the NW quarter of the trench (15-20cm).

We have started digging the Northwest corner again, we first dropped 10cm and then another 10.  We need to level the whole West (downhill side) and then clean it.

We have almost brought the Southeast side down to level.  That means 1005 will soon disappear.

The Northwest corner is 1007.  The only thing we have removed so far is the carbon sample.  We have found the nice bottom of the nice rimmed pot a little Southwest of the previous piece.  We also found another piece Northeast of it.  We continue to level the Southeast.  Also we are continuing South on the West side to level it all the way across.

We found another piece of sandstone as we found in the rock garden in the SW side of the trench.

We continue, we have to take a lot of dirt out of the West side.  There doesn't seem to be much, but there has been some more of those white flakes.  Perhaps it is more of what we see in 1005.  We are now sweeping the East side of the trench.  With that white material, and pot smash and some rocks.  We need a photo!

July 26, 2000

We are cutting the section in the middle of the trench and we are looking for lines and we saw the white material in the North side of the trench for the first time.  But as with the South Side, these white pieces are not forming a line which would indicate some sort of architecture.

We decided to dig the higher part of L1007 in the middle so we will have a section.  And then we will remove the rest.

We found a piece of teeth in the section in the middle, it might be an animal bone buried there or related with the surface (Elvan's kitchen).

We cleaned the West surface and began a probe from there heading East to the middle of the nice-rimmed pot and Elvan's kitchen.  Also, in the very Northwest corner, there are some bones and loose soil which we will open as L1008, a pit.

I removed a large piece of pottery about half way down the probe, 10cm below the surface of the kitchen.

In the probe we found some rocks at the level of the West side of the trench.  They look like they are a circle.  And some cobbles also.

We found some white chalk-like particles in the Northern side of the middle section.  We opened a new locus 1008, we thought there was a pit but we couldn't find too much pottery or bones in it.  It was obvious that it was loose.

We are now cutting 1007, from the probe to the South side.  We will try to find the rest of Peter's pot.  Before breakfast we thought there was some mud brick in the NW part but we couldn't see the edges.  There were some lines but probably they were because of the roots.

We have a bunch of so-so stuff and it is hard to put it all together.  The rock circle seems promising as the dirt in the wall above it is very pebbly.  The kitchen even seems to form a circle.  I found some ash in the Southwest corner, but we have no facilities to remove it.

July 28, 2000

I have opened a new locus on the Southwest corner where the ash sample is.  We were unable to take a decent ash sample.  We will take elevations again because there may be a mistake.

We are digging in L1009.  It is a 1x1 m square and we are trying to find what is around the ash (that we couldn't take).  We are digging L1007 from the South to the kitchen (in the center of the trench) and we are trying to find the rest of the rock circle at the bottom and we will check the section in the North to see if we can make anything of the reddish material with white chunks (L1010).  Peter is going to take the nice-rimmed pot out.  He is digging from the West to the pot along the South Baulk.

There are some rocks under the big rimmed pot and they are at the same level with the kitchen/surface.  The rim that we found in L1007 doesn't fit to the big pot.  So we won't put that with the big pot.  It is thinner than the big pot.

The rocks that are at the same level with the kitchen/surface will be removed.  I will give a different Kt# to the rim (1061).

We found some of the shiny crumbly rock that we found a part of yesterday.  One part is in L1009 and one is in L1007 (bottom), at the same level with the other pieces of that shiny crumbly rock.

We found some more rocks in L1009 around the West edge of the circle formed by things in Elvan's kitchen.  It is a big pile of rocks and broken pottery.

In the Southwest we have dropped L1009 by 5 cm and there are a lot of rocks and some shiny stuff along the West baulk in the Northwest corner of the square we dug.  Nothing much on the East side of that L1009 square.

We have cut deeply L1006 towards the East baulk around the rocks.  On the North of our cut into the kitchen with L1007 we have run across more L1010 red-white dirt, which is good and expected.

We have quite a beautiful thing going down in the Southeast.  There is a straight line heading Northwest.

We found a different kind of dirt in the South side of the rock feature.  And we removed the rock there (in the South of the rock feature).  There are a lot of big white pieces there also.  We are leaving the white part and removing the dirt around it.

We seem to have found brick on top of the wall, it is red with white flecks in the section and towards the center.  We cut into the kitchen to come south into it.

Peter's Best Theory:  He decided that all the rocks in the area decided to migrate to our trench because we are so excited about rocks.  The dead rock garden told them about his love for rocks.  And some of them decided to create a wall, a straight line, but some of them thought that we would like another rock garden, so they formed a more unordered set of stones.

We are now leveling the middle part of the trench to the elevation of the West part.  There was a big white rock but then Andy stepped on it and now we are removing the pieces.  It was in the South side of the wall, we Munselled it as Gley1 8/1 Light greenish gray.

We have flattened and removed 1007, there are more rocks on the other (West) side, possibly connected.  The probe has shown the side of the rock pile.  We have one mudbrick to the South of the probe above the wall.  Also in the baulk we see mudbrick-redder.

July 29, 2000

First we decided upon all the loci for the day.  We started articulating the rock pile L1014.  Then we started to remove L1006, we first removed 5cm to level with the rocks in L1015.  But we couldn't find anymore rocks.  We are going down there.  We cut at an angle parallel to the wall.

And we started digging in L1018.  The soil seems to be the same as L1007 but there are 2 loci separating that from L1007 so we decided to separate it.  We will go down 10 cm in L1009 and are articulating my wall.  The rocks in L1015 and L1014 are not related, there is a part of hard soil between them.  There might be mud bricks between the rock pile L1014 and the wall.

We will clean and articulate the wall for a photo.  We never cleaned the wall but we did articulate the West part and we went a little deeper in the West half of L1009.

Also we leveled L1018 with L1014 to see lines.  And we worked a little on the mud brick lines  And we worked a little on the mud brick.  "And Andy worked on our baulk and he kicked the rocks there.  Now we have holes in our section."  But Peter found a piece of his pot in the dirt.  So we kept that!  But we won't keep the other pieces.  We were articulating the wall but it doesn't have an order and we found a piece of that shiny crumbly rock again.

We end the day with a lot of rocks exposed to no explanation.  So today, in recap, we cleaned the rock pile L1014, we articulated it a lot, it doesn't seem to go much further.  We leveled off the Northeast corner(L1010,L1018,L1014) to look for bricks since it seems to have different coloration and some hard surfaces.

We leveled what was left of L1006 North of the wall.  We have only a piece of mudbrick leftover.  We also began dropping the Southwest side around the rocks of L1012 and the South side L1009 which is South of the wall.  It is very much just dirt and not hard outside the wall.  We have found almost nothing in that area.  There are a lot of rocks, broken pottery and possibly brick in the Southwest corner.

We are still anxious about taking out L1010, the red brick, until we can clean the surface and search for bricks.  There is a nice base on top of the rock pile.  There seems to be very little under the Southwest rocks except brickish material.

July 30, 2000

We started cleaning the trench for photos.  Then we are planning to level L1009 then we will go deeper in L1013.  We saw a line in L1009 (very clear) parallel to the wall (L1011) on the South side, which separates the reddish dirt from the gray.  And now we are cleaning that area.  And in L1012 we found more rocks.  And we couldn't see the continuation of the red line so we are going 1 or 2cm more in that area.  We saw a line in the North side of the trench.  In the L1010 we saw a very clear line in the South-west direction.

Andy was nice enough not to kick over our piece of mud brick on our wall.

We dug L1009 down today about 15cm.  We leveled it to the West side that we cut yesterday.  In the Northeast corner is the red/gray separation, apparently a mud brick line to the South and parallel to the L1011 wall.  We spent a lot of time trying to level L1009 but have not yet finished.  In the Northeast corner of the trench I brought the East side of the rock pile (L1014), L1018, and L1010 to the same level and flat with my nice new big flat trowel.  We sprayed it to look for lines, but the only line we found was in the middle North side which runs east-west.

In the Northwest we dropped L1013 right up to the baulk but not all the way across.  We start to find some rocks including a crumbly colored one closer to L1012.  We took a soil sample on L1010 to remove it and found harder soil beneath.

July 31, 2000

We have the kid leveling L1009 South of the wall, I gave him a general pottery bag Kt1100, and he found some bone Kt1097.  It hasn't been cleaned so we don't see anything there yet, but we are looking for bricks.

In the Northwest corner we started cleaning away from the wall L1012 North through L1013 and we found a line extending Northeast from the other wall.  It is a nice line of stones.

In L1009 we found a different sort of shell on the North edge near L1011 wall, it is Kt1104.

Then we decided to remove the rock pile L1014, we find a lot of broken pottery and small-medium rocks.  We had to open kt1102 to remove the top stuff, and kt1101 to remove a nice base on top of the pile.  We also opened kt1105 for the middle to hold the rest of the pottery but changed to a bucket because there was so much.  Elvan found a small green rock in the pile.

There is hard stuff in L1010 above what looks to be the full extent of our new wall.  We are leveling L1014.  I also removed the pot smash in the corner of the walls in L1012, gave it kt1098.

What's interesting is that all the rocks are strewn about near the intersection of the two rock lines.  Perhaps it is a collapse.

We are not sure about L1012, it might be an architectural feature or a fill.  We cut through L1014, the rock pile, there was not much underneath.  The sections we saw on the South and West sides we had cut before were as low as it went.

We cut down L1018 heading Northeast.  The soil is chunky, with not too many pottery pieces.  As we reached the baulk we hit more rocks.  We also found a funny yellow rock in the middle.  It is some sort of rock made of a bunch of little rocks.  It didn't look like a brick.

In L1012 we now have rocks all over the West baulk in a semi-organized position.  As usual there is pottery smashed in between the rocks and a really nice base.

In the middle of the West baulk, West of the main intersection we dug L1012 down a bit and the soil seems to have more small rocks.  Also in L1018, there beings to be rocks of not much size, but not dirt.  On the East baulk there may be more.

We cut through L1015, the rocks in the middle of the East baulk.  We also leveled off L1018 in the corner.  The most interesting thing was we found a huge rock in the middle of L1010, in the middle of the North baulk in line with the new wall.  We will level everything to search for a connection.

L1010 is red with white specks.  That was different than L1015 which was dry with brownish chunks.  The difference was distinct.  Now Drew made an interesting observation, he said L1010 seemed to look like Fertilizer.  It definitely seemed to smell and feel a little like that.  It was a bit soft and moist (relatively speaking).

There were also a lot of larger rocks within L1010.  Possibly they are part of the wall, possibly thrown into the "pit" as the base of our red L1010.

August 1, 2000

We start today by separating all the loci.  Then we saw that the level surface between the wall of L1019 and L1011 seemed to be different along the lines of where L1014 was.  On the North it was more dirt and soft reddish.  On the South it seemed more blocky and crumbly like the topsoil.  So North is L1020, South L1016.  We will clear and level both.  We will screen a bucket from each since here may be a surface associated with our walls.  North is Kt1117 screen, south is kt1118 screen.

Elvan started to dig the Southeast corner of L1021 from L1009.  She wants to articulate the corner which seems to be here at the intersection.  She found a clam shell which I gave Kt1120. We haven't hit upon any more large rocks in the clearing of that surface.

We decided to level everything but we felt bad about our mud-brick so we decided to leave it there.  Don't worry!  We put a tag on it so it won't be mixed with anything: "Lovely mud-brick."  We found one more white rock (we found one in the Southeast corner a few days ago) in L1016.

We don't have our mud-brick anymore and Peter is cutting L1017 from the West.  Then we will clean the trench.  We found some more rocks under L1017.

We found some reddish stuff that might be pieces of an oven and it might be related with the rimmed pot.  And maybe related with all pot smashes there.  I will put that piece in a Kt bag.  We found another piece of obsidian.  We usually find that on both sides of the wall L1011.  The rocks that we found under L1017 might be near an oven because we found some reddish stuff with some possible ash.  Also we found a beautiful cover of a pot there.

After clearing the surface of L1016 and L1020 we found nothing, so we will call it L1020 all across the Northeast corner between walls L1019 and L1011.  Except in the center where we are digging down 10cm to find if there are anymore rocks, this we call L1022.

We are digging 1020 for 15cm.  There is an interesting piece of pottery in the middle of the rocks that we found under L1017.  It looks like the top of something with a little square piece to hold.  And there may be 2 pit formations in the West side of the trench.

August 2, 2000

We start the day by drinking çay and Apple juice for me.  After a rousing au coppola rendition of Beethoven's 9th Symphony we decided to dig in the dirt.  Our kid went to Jakob's trench, knocked out everyone and stole a flat small pick.  We expect retribution from Area B during the later part of the day.  It is quite amusing to watch our kid dig very slowly with an oversized hand pick.  Elvan, who is by nature very cruel, decided that a tired, sad, suicidal, crying trench mate Pete is preferable to the one who is happy, good-natured, and full of life.  We can only figure that she would make a poor Psychiatrist.

Our trench was pillaged last night by some locals searching for gold.  Actually, someone saw a young lady from Ankara digging late in our trench last night.  Elvan is a poet, she said, "If you close the cooler it will stay cooler." In reference to our water.

We are digging L1020 in the Northeast corner.  We will level to the wall L1011 for photographs.  We found a pile of medium-small rocks close to L1011 on the West side of L1020, at the same level as some other rocks.

In the Northwest corner we dropped L1025 about 10cm.  We took some pottery out of the baulk about 10cm up so Andy won't kick it out.  I separately kt'd it as kt1125.

Notice we decided to separated the pits in what used to be L1013.  The rocks there potentially outline some separate storage areas, so the West one is L1023, the East L1024 and everything outside is L1025.

We cleaned our trench, sent the kid to get a good whipping at Elle's trench, let Lokman chill, and took plan photos of the whole thing.

August 5, 2000

We separated the reddish stuff in the South of L1011 and the rocks perpendicular to the L1011 is L1027, on the east of L1027 is L1028.  The rocks (L1030) probably fell fro L1011 but they are a separte locus now.  We think the L1020 is more reddish now so we changed it as L1032.  We sprayed the floor but couldn't see anything.  And there is another circular formation in the NE corner (1/4 of a circle) with loose soil in it.  This is L1031.

Now we are digging L1012.  We are planning to level it.  We will dig L1032 for 5cm then we will search for mud-brick.  I kt'd a possible loom weight of stone from L1012 in kt1145.  There was a red brick-like stone found near there with a possible flat surface on one side.

There are some more rocks under L1032 so there is no mud-brick there.  Probably it was a surface with all pebbles.  But we took a soil sample from the surface.  The surface is the rocks we are uncovering.

In the Southwest corner we are searching hard to find the mud-brick from the spot we took L1012 off.  In L1032 we found a bunch of rocks.  As we try to level it to the rocks, the soil is more dirty and choppy, a bit more red.  It will be hard to level because it is loose.  We will take L1022 down 5cm to level it to L1009.  There seems to be no more rocks under the line formed between L1011 and L1021.

We are now leveling L1032 and there are more rocks under it.  We think the soil is more silt.  North of L1011 next to the East baulk, we found some rocks, and the sand around the rocks are darker like ash.  In this layer (L1032) there are a lot of pebbles.  We are cleaning the trench.

There is reddish stuff in the West side of the rocks that we found today (In the North of the wall L1011).  They look like bricks.

We dropped L1031 in the Northeast corner by 10cm.  There are many pebbles in that area.  The rocks stretching Southeast from L1026 are disconnected with the walls on the East baulk.  We are sweeping L1024/L1023 clean for a photo.  Also we will clean L1031 and L1026.

August 6, 2000

We are digging the pits L1023/L1024.  And the soil in the pit L1024 is really hard although it is soft in L1023.  We screened and took soil samples from both of them.  Peter thinks that he sees a line in the baulk.  "A mud-brick line", he started dreaming about mud-brick (!)  We found reddish stuff with white pieces under both pits (same material as in L1010).  We found a square shaped rock and we put that into the lithics bag.  Around the rocks in L1033, the soil is dark and silty.  Probably it contians ash.  It seems only to be on top of the flat square rocks.

We cleaned out some more of L1031 to level it with L1032.  We are looking for a connection between L1026 and L1036.  There are a lot of pebbles in the Northeast corner, but they don't seem to form a surface.

We dug L1032 East of L1034 between L1033 and L1036.  We found a piece of pottery with ash on the inside and a burned surface.  I also poked around in L1033 at the loose, dark silt.

Elvan started to articulate rocks in L1011 heading East.  She took pottery off of the wall.  There seems to be a straight line of rocks crossing from L1026 to L1036.  L1031 is on the North side, L1032 on the South.

L1031 is turning up some very good lithics.  We think it is a separate pit.  L1026 seems to have a box and a possible flat surface for work.  L1036 could be the same.  I screened and took a soil sample from L1031 and screened L1032.

A lot of small pieces are coming up in the Northeast corner.  We will probably change L1032 out.  We are dropping the Northwest corner 10cm in L1025.  We took some basalt from L1019 which was hanging out over L1025 and kt'd 1181.  There was also a nice rim we put into the pottery bag.  We are articulating L1036 and we will continue around to try to get a photo.

August 7, 2000

We start the day alone, without Elvan.  She has moved to area F.  We have a new worker, Ramazan.  We are cleaning out all the old rocks, almost all the loci will disappear today.  We chopped into L1021 and L1011 first, and took apart the smaller L1027.  Our goal is to level the trench, so only the big rocks found yesterday in the Northeast corner are showing.

The rocks of L1021 used to form the rings around the pits L1023, L1024.  There are many nice rocks in L1011.  I found a lot of rocks which have been worked.  There is also a lot of pottery.  It is amazing how much stuff they seem to have reused.  There were a lot of rocks worth saving so I had to open two bags.

I will open a new kt for anything directly under L1011.  The wall didn't go all that deep.  Maybe 3 courses at most on the uphill (East) side, but tappered down West.

Now I will cut down L1019.  The tent just ripped a meter off the West side.  What a day.  As Chuck points out, "I lost my tent, my rocks, and my woman all in one day."  It is one of those days.  We are removing the West half of L1026.  I have seen ash in some dirt after we cleaned L1026.  Also under L1021 there is a potentially more dark surface which may be a burnt surface.

Finally we took the big rock out of L1022 and leveled that.  Also, what was left of L1025 at the level of L1024, I cut down and screened half of it.

Then we swept clean and looked at our new flat floor.  I took elevations and measured a bunch of new loci.

The day is going very late because a 60 Minutes team of reporters and photographers are here.  We will start to dig our new loci, L1044, the East part.  Also we are articulating L1039 rocks.

August 8, 2000

Archaeologists think I have too many loci, so I will redesign.  We are digging L1044, which now includes most of the trench.  Free loci numbers which now remain to be used: L1041, L1042, L1043.  I found a watermelon seed in the Southwest, just above L1035 in the West baulk.  This is the Southern most point of L1040.  We dug 10cm across L1044, there were a lot of bones.  We will dig another 15 cm.  In the North part we seem to be happening upon a lot of bones, so we will carefully take this section and clean it.  We will continue to go down on the South side.

After breakfast I dug a probe from the East into L1029 to see if the blue square is anything.  We also dug L1044 down another 10cm.  We start to hit pebbles on the East, but the center is still just dirt.  I found a nice blade of obsidian on the South Baulk and I kt'd it as 1226.

The blue crust in L1029 is not very thick and has a lot of pebbles.  It seems to continue North.  It is only slightly below the level to which L1029 was cut, also the bottom of the wall.  It may be a surface or the mortar between bricks.  We cut it in half during the probe.  No bricks yet.  After the probe, we also dropped the North part of L1029 since we don't know what else to do.  On the West of L1044 there seems to be another blue layer.  It may be West of where the L1019 wall used to be.

The L1044 and L1029 blue sections can not as yet be connected.  In the North part of L1044, there are more broken rocks and pottery.  There maybe a line of rocks there, that leads Southwest from the center of the North Baulk, possibly related to the aforementioned L1044 West blue section.

We also dropped the Northwest corner, L1038 a few centimeters in order to see if there is actually a brick there.

August 9, 2000

The order came down from above to move dirt in this trench.  We start by dropping, leveling the South side of L1029 where the blue corner used to be.  I found a cute dog in the corner about 1.3m by 1.3m from the Northwest corner.  I kt'd it as kt1238.  It seemed to be aroudn a lot of bones.  We have found some bones in this location and there is pottery on small rocks all around this area in the middle of the North part of the trench.

Things are starting to come out under L1038 is a wall of rocks heading Southwest.  The corner may be formed with some rocks of L1039.  The sheep figure maybe from the corner where pottery smashes and stones may indicate a surface.  Under L1028 a line of rocks is coming up under where L1027 used to be.   The most confusing spot and possibly most interesting is in the middle of the North.  There may be a corner with the rocks.

We took a small carbon sample from the Northwest of the rocks of L1028.  L1044 is almost all gone.  I want to finish off this fill today.  A piece of basalt was knocked out of the East baulk 40 cm up from the base.

After breakfast we cut down the lump remaining in the middle from L1029.  On the South side there is some darker dirt which maybe an oven or something.

After sweeping L1029 clean, there is a line of blue stuff with large pot sherds.  There is another line like an S, but there is no symmetry that would mean anything.

We cut down this section, it is split by the blue line L1037 on the West, L1034 on the East.  We cut the Southwest corner of L1037 to find the edge of the cobbles below.  We scraped L1034 to find more blue stuff ont he East side, it starts to uncover a possible extension of the rocks of L1033.  We pulled a round stone from the cobbles, kt'd as 1261.

Then we cut down L1034 to level it with the East part only in the corner at first.  To finish off L1044 we cut the middle of the East side.  We finish choppping today and are sweeping.

August 10, 2000

We have Lokman drop the Northwest corner L1038 to the current level of L1044.  We are also cutting along the South baulk L1034 to get rid of it and level to L1034.  We cut slowly here because there are a lot of rocks and some nice pottery.

We also leveled L1040, I will look for bricks in the baulk.  We found something 1.25m from the South Baulk and 1.2 m from the EB.  It is a piece of pottery with a hollow inside, shaped like a kettle or something.  Then East of this there was a piece of an oven and a huge carbon sample 1.3m from the SB and 0.8m from the EB in L1034.  

We continue to work L1034 down from the North.  THe wormenare picking it over slowly.  I also took a soil sample form the center.

Lots of action on the West baulk.  We dropped L1038, L1040 in the morning.  We cut a rectangle out of the circle that was L1035.  That soil is very hard, but there doesn't seem to be any lines.  No pottery inside- we found only one piece.

Well, we swept the West and there is a yellowish square.  THere are two possible rows, one with larger, one smaller bricks.  We then dug a little further East in L1038 towards L1039.  We found a piece of Obsidian up against L1039 that was quite nice.  There was only a few cm to clean up there.  I will dig L1026 to take off the top.  I will pick off one nice rock.  We are also cutting L1044 from the South Baulk down 10cm to Elvan's street.  We found a lot of big pig bones in the new L1044 cut.

In L1025 I had a thought- it might be part of the door threshold that connects Elvan's street to L1039.  It might be the next step up.  But I removed it already, the rocks could be connected, there is more fill under in the middle.  But the rocks around the edges might be connected.

August 12, 2000

There is a donut of red outline and black interior.  It is 1.5m from the EB and 0.6m from the SB.  It is only about 1/4 right now.  We dug it out and kt'd it separatley.

We then cut down L1044 east of the hole we cut on the last work day.  L1044 seems to continue under L1034 as the pebbles have now disappeared in that region.  There is some dark dirt in the middle near Elvan's street and the section waiting to happen.  We cut L1044 until the pebbles which still existed in the East near L1028 and the North between L1037 and the baulk.  We also cut L1037 down from the South all  the way to the North baulk.

Then we cut across L1039 the fill behind (north of) the rocks, there are more rocks.  We took a piece of basalt and a piece of stone in half a cylinder from the corner of L1033.

We begin to believe there may be a reason we find nothing along the South baulk where L1009 and now L1044 is.  Perhaps there was a large pit there.  As we dig we will learn.  We will clean the South baulk.

The rock pile under L1028 will get a new Locus, L1042, and will be removed.  Eventually we want to get a photo of this trench.

IN L1039 and the cobbled street area some possibly reused rocks exist.  There is a scraped out square in a large rock in the corner of L1039.  There are two rocks with concave possible post holes in the cobbles.  THe pebbles of L1034 seem to finish under what we cut there is dirt again.  It might be a thick surface.  Then we cut into L1031 to level it.  We found a small piece of metal.

We are cutting into L1042 which is in the corner Southeast.  THere is a lot of pottery here and rocks.  The soil seems hard-packed and varied.  Possibly collapse of the same material that a later settlers used to build the wall L1011.

Under the North part of L1034 there is dark crumbly soil.  Possibly this is an oven there is some donut-colored red dirt in the middle.

In clearing L1042 we find a lot of small ash pieces.  L1037 and L1031, L1039 are all level and swept.  There is a lot more blue pebbly possible surface and a hard red square possibl brick.  We start to clean L1043, Elvan's street next, for plan photo.

August 13, 2000

We took our second plan photo this morning.  Now we are taking the rocks in the West off their pedastals.  Also we are leveling L1037, taking the potential surface away.

The rocks in the West are the top most level of L1045.  There was not much there.  The entire section outside of the potential mud-brick is L1045.  There is not really a definite line to make it different from L1044, but because of the location of the rocks above and Elvan's wall (L1043) on the East, the Southeast corner of L1045 is put near L1043 and L1035.  There are some rocks and pieces of pottery near the West baulk on the North side of L1046, the potential mud-brick.  It may be the edge of L1046 or a pit, too early to tell.

So L1046 is the mudbricky construction on the West baulk.  We will clear away from it.  We have already started in the South pulling away from the West baulk.

We are clearing L1037 from the South where L1034 was cut yesterday, all the way North to the NB.  L1031 is closed and the fill behind L1039 will become part of L1037.  We seem to be cutting through this potential surface across the board.

After breakfast we chopped L1045, the South part down 20cm in a square to straighten and look for lines.  There seem to be bricks there and possibly even under where we chopped, they extend out.  It is very choppy and hard to tell what is what.  I found some slag in the corner that is similar to some we found a potential watermelon seed in above this.

Then we chopped down the remains of L1042 from the baulk in the Southeast corner.  In the bualk there seems to have been a redline above a lot of the rocks and pottery in this section.  It may have dropped off as I saw nothing like this when we cut out L1042 yesterday.

Under L1037 there seems to be a potential hole with ash-maybe an oven.  The rocks on the East baulk, of L1033 and L1036, are beginning to pedastal without obvious things underneath.

August 14, 2000

We start by straightening the edges of the Southeast corner.  This gets it's own pottery bag.  We at the same time are moving North in our L1045 probe to find the edge of the L1046 mud-bricks.  This brings us up to Elvan's street (L1043).

Next I will level L1044 in what appears to be a futile effort to find bricks there, or anything of note.  The greatest hope for this area remains the Southeast corner where it seems 2 bricks have appeared just cutting the corner.  I am unable to find any symmetry in our probe into L1045, though most of the dirt is pretty solid.  It might all be collapse.  We have swept L1044.  In the Northeast near the baulk between L1036, L1033 there is definitly an ash pit, a donut and some smashed pottery and pebbles, perhaps it is a kitchen.

To see about finding something in L1045, we dropped another 15cm.  We swept L1044 and are trying to see something there.  There may be a line running from the edge of L1042 to the edge of L1043.  This would be constitant with our big pit theory.  The pit theory is that people later dug a hole on our south baulk down quite far and took all the big rocks.  Perhaps it was my original well theory.  We will look for lines in the baulk.  It seems we have never found anything where L1009 and now L1044 are.  There are big chuns coming up in L1044, so maybe we are cutting through brick.

Around breakfast we dropped L1044 and squared off cell corners.  The same was of L1045, which we had dropped an additional 15cm.  Also we are cappadocing L1036 to see if there is anything underneath.  If not, the stones can be removed.

Well we found a great little glass or rock crystal blade North of L1036 on the East baulk.  We also cleared under L1033 to a small extent.  In the North, just west of L1039 we dropped 10cm to see if there was anything in L1045.  Finally we removed the collapse on the West side of L1043.

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.

August 16, 2000

We start by taking out the section hump from L1037.  The blue pebbles were over  the L1043 cobbles but under the big L1039 stones.  As we peel back L1037 section hump, there is a lot of that dark ashy silt underneath.

There was a pit in the middle of L1048, 0.5 from SB, 0.8m from EB, with a 0.22 diameter and 0.12 depth.  I took some soil from it and a lot of worn pot sherds.  This we will call the South pit as it is in the South part of this locus.

In L1047 in the Northwest is another similar pit I will call North pit.  We dug it.  1.15m from SB, 1.1 from EB is its center.  It has 0.24m diameter and 0.12m deep.

Then we dug L1051 ash pit out.  Also we begun to level North from L1047 to find extent of bricks.  First we dug North towards L1051/L1050.  Then we dug westward towards the corner of L1043.

We also took a soil sample from L1051, the ashy pit.  As we scrap, the pit became long in a North-south direction.  There is less crumbly dirt on the same sides, I am trying to find the full extent.  All the dirt in this area tends to have dark silty dirt.

After drawing the baulk we dug the North part of the probe in L1045 up to the North baulk.  Then we also cut straight west from L1045 through the bricks of L1046 up to the West baulk.

August 17, 2000

Final day of digging.  We took plan shots of L1043, Elvan's street.  Then we removed the rocks and flattened to the level of L1037 to the East.  After rocks were removed from L1039, L1043, I called the dirt below L1052.

We were beginning to clear L1048 back a few cm to search for lines when a small hole about 5cm in diameter was opened.  At first I supposed it to be another animal hole.  But it was quite deep.  Finally, looking in, I saw a clearly defined circle about 5cm intot he hole - a pot rim for a large pot.  The rest of the day was spent digging out this pot.  We dropped a corner of L1044 on the East side by 45cm.  That gave a good section on L1047 which allowed me to see how far down the bricks went.  Farther down it is hard to find lines, but there is still the same solid reddish material.  That lasts almost 35cm down until an obvious plaster surface is hit.  We dug through that 10cm as ash began to come up.  It will be interesting to explore that surface next year.  On the East of the pot, I dropped the South part of L1048 60cm.  We didn't make it too far through the surface on this side.  However, there are definitly bricks in L1048.  They are very collapsed and at a funny angle.  I left the North part to be used as a study section for this locus in the future.  The East side should give an idea of the extent of L1049, though I couldn't see anything right away.

The interesting thing is that the pot was sitting about 5-10cm into the surface seen at the bottom of L1047.  I believe they could be related as the plaster seems to creep up on the side of the pot as if it was laid after the pot was put in place.  The pot was cracked on the South side due to roots growing through it, but it is relatively whole in the rest.  The great thing is there is not too much dirt inside, hence the original large hole we spotted.

I believe the mud brick collapses of L1047 and L1048 to be lying on the surface.  We dug out the pot, taped it up and carried it home.  We had to dig a large concavity in the baulk.  We call this locus L1053.  It extends South about 0.3m, it is 1.3m wide and 0.9m high.