Daily Trench Journal

Area D

Trench 4

June 28, 2007

Today we continued going down in L4121 and 4122, as well as inside the trench in 4120,

4126, and 4127.

In 4122, I revisited the pit 4123 because we had left part of it undug, as it ended up going down in a bell shape under 4122. After tracing it quite a ways under 4122, we decided to stop digging it as a pit and go down over it in 4122. We think that it may have actually been a stockpile of wood or reeds that burned or maybe more material that fell in off the roof. The pit that we dug ended at a surface and was far more ashy than any other part of the collapse we have dug.

L4123 revealed a burial (L4128) of a young child of about 5 yrs old. We know this, because we could see new teeth in the jaw coming in under baby teeth. The burial is very poorly preserved however, and all the bones are literally coming out in flakes for Bradley.

In L4127, along the West side of wall L4118, I found a pot submerged below a surface. The pot is located immediately south of the wall L4119. The pot originally appeared to be a flat small pot smashed by a rock, however, upon further excavation, I pulled up the rock to find it sealing a complete submerged storage vessel. The surface under 4127 runs right up to the rim of the vessel showing that it was buried into the floor. Also, the fact that a giant rock landed in the pot’s opening without smashing it shows that it had a great deal of support around it. Inside the pot was a smaller pot that may have either fallen in or acted as a scooper within the pot. The large pot itself was relatively empty save some soil and possibly small bone fragments inside. Bradley predicts that if we were to go into the baulk, we would find a whole row of these in some sort of storage room.