Trench D6 Daily Journal      August 12, 2002

Drew only today!

I concentrated today in the South end of D6 in the hopes of relieving some of the stress of detail work and for the hope for some undistracted time to work on the furnace. This plan failed however, and I realized we needed to define 5 new loci to the pot smash and surrounding rock lines etc, and as we pushed down we kept finding artifacts and feature, and so the day ended with a good deal of work in the South and almost none in the furnace.

The new loci are as follows: L39 is the area of large sherds and debri in the S middle of D6. It contains several large rims and much decorated pottery, some of which seems above and one piece which sits halfway below surface L17. Just east of L39 is an area of large rocks, L42 and just North of that a mudbrick and stone formation near the edge of the step, L43. L41 is the line of stones running E-W that obliquely abuts (roughly) the line of rocks L40 (running N-S). However these two seem of different nature (L41 is made of smaller rocks more closely spaced) and neither is very well organized (Chok Karashik). L40 neatly borders the southern 1/3 of surface 37’s eastern boundary.

We first cleaned the rest of the packed soil off of the South end of L36 and came down first on larger pottery and then on a continuation of the surface L37, which continued its southerly downhill slope. All of L37 is beautifully preserved.

We then excavated the area to the East of the line of rocks L40, finding first clear soil and then some large shards and rocks. We continued 10 cm at a time and found a ¾ ring of rocks and an area covered in ~15cm stones. These areas still need to be assigned loci.

Dr.Swartz came over and we talked furnace. She introduced the theory that perhaps the floors 30 and 31 were perhaps built over the period of only one season, and that the slumping was great and occupation period may have been extremely short. Something to chew on. Baris talked with his professor (Doc.Dr. Gulriz Kozbe ) about the furnace, and she introduced the observation that there was not enough debri and ash around L20 to convince her that there was much use, ad that perhaps it might have some other function than as a smelting furnace. Backing this up is the lack of "accessories" and tools to work the furnace, although the possibility of a very short use and then abandonment might be more likely.