July 8th, 2024 AM: We began by running a pickpass in the two southern meters (E-W), starting in the center meter and moving south. The soil feels dry and broke off in some larger (around 5cm) compact chunks. We are finding a high amount of pottery, including much coarseware and fine impasto. We also found a bucchero rim with ridges. We are continuing to find fragments of tile, some more abraded than others, the pieces seem to be smaller in size on average (compared to Friday) but seem to be improving in quality.

SF3 sf-t108-2024-2-3 Bucchero rim with ridges 219.55 E 35.38 S 27.93m AE

After shoveling and sorting the soil, we ran a pickpass in the northern meter, making sure to avoid any visible concentrations of terracotta, we will excavate more carefully in that area once the elevation has been. Lowered. We also pickaxed the southern meter for the second time today so far to bring the elevation of it down to reach the remainder of the trench. While removing and sorting the soil we have encountered higher amounts of pottery than previous days. This includes rims, bucchero, handles and fineware. Terracotta finds have increased slightly in comparison to last week. A large piece of bone was also found as well as a tooth. We used hand axes trowels to explore the N meter around the exposed tile. With this technique, we uncovered a concentration of 3-4 large stones of about 10-15 visible cms and about 7 fragments of tile of 5-10 cm in size. We removed the stump in the NW corner revealing small stones and soft clay-like soil directly beneath it. Below this layer, we uncovered additional larger stones. We had to leave a large root existing directly below the removed stump in place for the moment. This rock formation is in line with a feature being currently excavated in trench t-106 about a mater NW. So far, we have defined rocks and tile fragments beginning in the NW corner and extending east until about until about 20cm from the eastern edge. In the NE corner we uncovered small stones (around 4cm). Our finds while sifting the soil in this area have remained quite consistent although we noticed our finds of the layer of soil above the in situ tile and stone include slightly less pottery in comparison to the southernmost meter and a half. Throughout the morning, we encountered slightly more plaster than previous days with about 7 throughout the trench.

PM: We continued to excavated around and define the collection of stone and tile. Then, we pickaxed the southern 1 ½ meters as a means of evening out the elevation of the trench. Almost right away, we removed the two large well preserved pieces of pan tile from the center of the northern meter. The soil here is less compact and sandier and more crumbly than the soil in the northern end of the trench. While clearing the loose soil resulting from the pickpass, a concentration of what now appear to be cover and pan tiles in the center meter slightly to the east. This concentration looks to be adjacent to the one in the northernmost meter. Just 10cm south from this concentration the fragment of a rochetto with a 1/12 cm rochetto was found. We continued to extract the loose soil with trowels, dustpans and brushes.

SF4 Sf-t108-2024-2-4 Rochetto 219.12 E 36.16 S Locus 2 27.88m AE

Closing Elevations:

SW corner: 27.77m AE NW corner 27.81 AE NE corner 27.91m AE SE corner 27.78m AE

Closing totals: -terracotta 2 1/3 bowl -BF 19 -pottery 199 fragments – BF20 -bone 3 - BF 21