August 2, 2001

Week 5 Weekly Summary

The most important feature of the week was the locus L1033, what we tend to call the Wonder Wall. This is a large mudbrick surface 3 meters by 3 meters that we believe may be a wall. We hope that we will be able to define exactly whether it is a wall or a large pavement within the next week. We have begun a small sounding area in L1034, the area abutting the mudbricks, to go down 40 cm or until we reach something interesting. We are doing this so that we can see the bricks in profile on the side to see if we can see any courses, as well as to determine once and for all whether there are more than just one course, which would indicate that it is a wall, or whether it only has one course, in which case it would be a pavement.

We found a large pot smash in L1036, which we gave KT# ----, which was probably the best find of the week. Much of our digging in this trench has been fundamentally different from the digging in almost every other trench on the site, as there are very few pottery fragments in the layers that we excavate. This pit gave some pottery fragments, and the actual pot smash was large, filling up a large plastic bag. I appreciated this pot smash. I have hope that in the coming days we may find a black ashy layer which may also give some pot smashes and pottery.

We also spent the week removing walls around the large wall or pavement to try to better understand how the large wall interacts with the surrounding loci. We were able to remove both L1029, a wall with only one course which almost seems like a curb to L1033, as well as L035, the oven wall, which cut into the L1033. Removing these walls did not really help us understand the area any better, but it was a good idea.  Interestingly enough, the black line that seemed to mark the edge of the two sides of the wall of the oven seemed to continue underneath the actual wall. I don't know what to make of that, as dark black burn lines seem to go around and underneath stuff in almost every area of the trench, and it is really confusing.

Our plan of action for the coming week is to define where the wall or pavement is, and then hopefully either leave it in and dig around it, or take it out if it is a pavement.