Dialy Summary

Area F, Trench 2

June 22, 2005

M. Eppihimer

The day started with cleaning the trench for camera crane photos. This included removing the last bit of 2061 that was covering the front of platform 2051.  This produced an animal figurine (KT 25). It also included scraping the top of wall 2050, which showed several new things.  First, the wall in the south is only 50 cm wide, not the 55 cm previously thought. The individual bricks are 50 cm by 24 cm in plan. Second, in the north there is a line dividing the wall into two parallel segments. This line is aligned with the line separating the wall from platform 2051.   

After the photos, we started digging the circular features 2066 and 2067 within floor 2065. The smaller circle proved to be a pit that was filled with ashy soil and small, but coarse broken pot sherds. There was also a patch of plaster associated with the sherds at one point. There was also an animal figurine (KT 6). We reached a stopping point where the soil color appeared to change to a lighter brown. The pit may continue, however.

Locus 2067 was a more complex pit/feature combination. The first three centimeters contained a concentration of pebbles. Thereafter, the soil became compact and ashy. The shift was too quick to get a clean soil sample from 2067. The new soil had a 14 cm diameter ring near the center, so this became locus 2070 and the soil around it 2069. We first dug the soil inside the ring, but made the mistake of not taking a soil sample before we realized that the ring was in fact the rim of a complete pot. Not knowing if the pot was sitting in the pit of 2069, or it 2069 was a surface that the pot was sunk into, we sectioned 2069 and discovered that the area right around the pot was orange and that beneath the black ashy soil of 2069 was a pebble layer followed by a brown layer. Thinking that these layers may continue under surface 2065, we decided to stop digging 2069 as a pit and leave until we can remove 2065. There is also a 6 cm wide ring around the circular feature.

Finally, we started removing surface 2065.  A 50 by 50 cm HAP square was placed in the NE part. As we started to remove this area, we realized that it would be extremely difficult and time consuming to separate each of the many superimposed plaster surfaces and the fill between them. Instead, all were removed together and photos were taken of the layers.  In the area of the HAP, the layers were a total of 4 cm thick. Elsewhere, it varied both thicker and thinner. More descriptive details will be given tomorrow. At the end of the day, the removal of the floor was incomplete. Close to the wall 2050, the uppermost layers rose to join the plastered wall. The lower layers seem to undercut the outermost plaster layers on the wall. In the soil from the floors were small lithics, potsherds, bones, shells, and a stone bead (KT 5). The soil underneath the lowest surface is loose and ashy. At the end of the day, 22.5 9-liter buckets had been sieved, about half of the surface.