July 29, 2001

The push to remove the wall remnants associated with S surface L5027 continued today. As L5008 was pushed down, its mudbricks came off in 4 clear layers, ending roughly where the surface formerly lay. It nicely assuaged the doubts I had harbored about the surface. Further, at the bottom a couple more pieces of the black on white painted pottery. As we chopped down the W-baulk hugging remnants of L5031, we came down upon a pebble surface (L5049). Oddly, this surface had not continue to the E, or we would have discovered it when we took the majority of L5031 down. It's possible we missed it, but I find that very unlikely as we carefully took the locus down in 10 cm levels. Of course, at this point any context the surface may have had was lost, so I took a couple photos, a couple levels, and promptly hacked it out. It also had an associated (cutting) ash pit which continued into the W baulk (L5050). This series of loci produced a couple interesting small finds, including some slag (KT 5146), a seed (KT 5151) and a triangular bead made of a smooth white stone, possibly alabaster (KT 5250). Unfortunately the context on the latter is somewhat unclear as we found it while sweeping after a segment of digging and, though probably from L5031, could also be from the bottom of surface L5027 or L5008. The good news is that almost all of the large annoying mudbrick features are gone now, with just a little final clean-up work to do tomorrow.

In the SE, L5044 was expanded to try and see if the mudbrick collapse in the area was associated with pit L5024 or part of a larger feature. As the bricks did not continue away from the realm of the pit, the two are probably related.

Finally, in the N I think I have learned all I can from the features as they lay, so I need to start cutting some of the stuff which appears clear to double-check my theories. I still have mixed feelings about NW-SE (?) wall L5037 and whether it once continued to meet SW-NE wall L5039 or not. Unfortunately, I can't foresee any smoking barrels to prove that one way or the other. Stupid sloping tepe....

The first order of business then, will be to start cutting down into the ovens (L5033, 5036 and 5048) which in the case of the 2 former, have their tops becoming pedastled. Hence I began removing their pottery linings today as those will surely get mixed if we cut them without removing the linings. We should be able to finish with that in the early morning tomorrow and hopefully start cutting them down before breakfast. Hopefully the cutting with reveal which surface they're associated with and which they're cutting.