F1JP08082002

Daily Trench Journal

Area F, Trench 1

I was not at the site the last two days, as once again I was feeling very ill. Luckily I am feeling better now. My trench was in action yesterday as Dawnell ran my trench and ran into some great new context to go with the already interesting cobble surface locus. We started many new loci today that we will talk about as part of this new context.

We began the day by continuing our excavation of L1080, the wall or pavement structure that had really clean lines to indicate to us the presence of the mudbrick that is not reddish in color but is instead the exact same color as the surrounding dirt. We were going to take it down to level with the surrounding dirt all the way to the wall, but in the end we couldn’t bring ourselves to do it and left a small hump about 50 cm long so that we can continue to lift buckets out of our trench, which at this time is closing in on three meters deep.

Today we had a plan shot of the cobble surface and the surrounding areas. This plan shot needed to involve the entire cobble surface, so we needed to expose the cobbles which were underneath 1087 and 1088. We did just this, including the removal of the large pottery rim piece and assorted other pieces. These pieces we put into a separate KT bag and since we believe they were laying on the cobble surface we gave them KT1 of L1086.

Oops update: As we were articulating the cobble surface several cobbles which connected the entire cobble surface were removed by a worker in just a couple of seconds while I was talking to the area supervisor after they had begun their work. This led to a small section of about 15 to 20 cm which is blank while the rest of the time it is cobbles. So that is a shame, but oh well.

In addition we removed the fill area 1061, hard packed fill, from the area next to the cobbles. Then we removed the wall L1069 to get rid of it since we thought that it was only one course and that the rest of the trench was now under a level of where this wall was.

But then we removed all of this wall and looked and lo and behold the wall appears to continue for even farther down, so this wall continues. How cool.

After removing all of this dirt and getting most of the trench down to level we were pleased to have the presence of Photo Drew. He took a plan shot.

Near the end of the day, and visible on our day plan of the day we finally assigned new loci all around the trench. Here is a rundown of the new loci:

1089: The surface to the W of the cobble surface which appears to be contemporary.
For right now this surface starts at the W baulk and works towards the cobbles. Right now it is about halfway there and I don’t know if it will go right up to the cobbles. This is the area of the three lithics SF’s from yesterday.

1090: The oven which was discovered yesterday which we easily were able to pick out.

1091: The wall of said oven, for now very hard to actually define.

1092: The area which is to the E of the cobbles and S of the wall locus 1069, which is pretty small and also very boxed in

1093: This is the area to the E of the cobbles and to the N of the wall locus 1069. for now both of the last two loci appear to be fill, although that could change.

For now those are the loci that we are going to go with.

CM