Daily Trench Journal

Area C

Trench 1

11 June 2005

Today we are continuing with cleaning and looking for good contexts. There was a small bit of L1102 (cleaning locus) left by the stair in the southwest corner of the trench. That is being cleaned up and removed. Also we are removing the short wall in the northeast of the trench (L1106) since it was floating. Then we will continue taking down the eastern section as cleaning locus 1107.

In the removal of L1102 we found a nice profile sherd with a small rim and carination as well as incised decoration resembling a simple straight line topped by a wavy line. Andy says this looks like a typical 2nd/3rd millennium cooking pot and the design looks like a lot of pottery found in the Urfa/Syria region. So the pottery seems to be consistent with the carbon date from the 2003 season.

We removed the short wall (L1106) in the northeast baulk of the trench, since it appeared to be floating. While it does not appear to continue down vertically, it does appear to continue back into the baulk to at least one more course. Two large cobbles removed from this short wall were reused door sockets.

In the removal of the arbitrary cleaning locus (L1107) a circular pit (?) covered with pottery stone and a white plaster was uncovered. There appears to be a surface leading away from it. There are also some random mud bricks. Below what was thought to have been a mud brick foundation to a stone wall (L1069) now appears to be a possible two-course wall cutting through the southeast corner of the trench. A good part of this was removed as L1105, but it continues at least in part of the locus. Tomorrow I will see if I can trace the wall on the east side, to see if it is separate from the "platform" earlier hypothesized.