August 15, 2001

I started a really new phase in my trench today, in a trench which looks totally new from the one which I had only one week ago. It is too bad that we are wrapping up in the next couple of days, since this new phase is very promising. Today we closed and opened many loci. Everything in the trench was basically level, so a decision was made to super-reevaluate. Let's look at the developments in the trench for the day.

Both of my good workers, Sherif and Erdal, were back today. Good times, good times. We began the day by straightening baulks some more.

After this Andy came down and instantly recognized the pit which we had begun to dig out yesterday that we had stopped on. The pit border was easy to pick out and we gave this pit a new locus number L1046. He then suggested that we close every locus in the trench except for this new pit, the new oven L1045, and the area near the southwest corner, which we already believed was different. For the rest of the trench we assigned clean up loci (1047-1049). These loci were arbitrary, but also were based upon changes which we seemed to begin to see in the trench at that time. We assigned cleanup loci because we literally could not see anything in the trench because of the black ashy layer. It was decided that we needed to scrape off the top of the black ash and make the trench at least somewhat easier to see. While it is possible that in some areas we may have taken off 2 or 3 centimeters, when we took elevations on these areas, which was almost the entire trench, we consistently got the same elevations as before the cleanup loci. For this reason the clean up loci have the same opening and closing loci, even though in one locus, L1049, we ended up with a fair amount of pottery on this top level of ash.

After cleaning up, we redefined loci. In actuality, we were very close to our clean up loci, as the eastern half of the trench seems to be harder and different from the other half of the trench. We made the eastern half of the trench, except for the pit and the oven, L1050. The oven obviously stays as L1045, and if we can identify the oven wall it will also become a new locus. The western half of the trench is basically divided into two halves. The SW half has a whiter lighter brown structure that is different from the surrounding ashy area. We made these loci 1039, which was already there, and 1051, new fill locus. The NW area has something different going on near the west baulk, as it is whiter than the very soft gray ashy area. White area is L1053, fill ashy stuff is L1052.

After the redefinition, we began excavating the pit and the oven. The pit is soft. The oven is black and ashy. The oven has a very large brick pedestal in it which is 64 cm long by 30 cm wide by 9 cm high. We think it may be a pottery stand. I actually think it may be a sacrificial altar. Just kidding.

Plans are for us to continue to dig for an extra day or two because of the interesting point we are at, while everyone else is going to be shutting down today except for a couple others. We will be taking the oven down to see what exactly is going on there.