Daily Journal

Area D

Trench 8

July 21, 2004

Today is the second to last day of excavation for this season. Because of this we are in a precarious position in this trench. While to goal is to clearly define everything that we can this year, we also want do not want to start anything that we cannot finish.

The area now assigned as L42 was not a floor. As we were excavating it became clear that if anything it was the hard packed sub floor of what had been on top of it, floor L32. So L42 is that area which was not floor and L 45 was the definite floor area. Because L45 was so pitted and hard to follow quite a bit of its sub floor came off in the same locus.

When L45 came down to the level of the top of L30 we could clearly see the continued outline of the fill. We changed L30 to a pit designation and then excavated the newly uncovered section pulling out a few small finds as well as more slag and mud brick chunks. It appeared that L27 was the other edge of that pit and it had cut through the wall. However towards the end of the day after we had taken off approx 15cm of L23 we found more clearly defined mudbricks within the pit area. So L30 cannot be a pit and L27 cannot go with it because there is a wall in the middle. We followed the line of the wall out into the area that is the bottom of L33. Here we found large paving stones which appear to be mud brick. The floor, L41, of which only small pieces were found, appears to be on top of it. Right at the end of the day we were trying to follow these bricks and see where they go. It appears that they come up almost to the edge of L30 in a straight line; it also appears that there is another corner of wall brick in the area where L45 was. This could mean that there was a room in which L30 was the fill and the slump from the walls kept the edge from being discernable when we were digging L30. Hopefully tomorrow we will be able to follow the bricks and see where it goes.