Daily Trench Journal

Area H, Trench 2

May 21, 2005

M. Baldi

After some early consultations between Dr. Bradley Parker of the University of Utah, Dr. Bekir Gordil of UCLA and I about where to place the next trench (H-2) as I joined the excavation today, we decided on Area -H- situated Northeast of the main tepe mound. It was decided to excavate area H as it is an area which has not been excavated, with the exception of a small 1 by 1 meter deep sounding conducted in the 2001 season by Sibel Torpil of Bilkent University at Ankara. The almost 3 meter deep sounding was never re-opened and Sibel’s notes indicate a small quantity of ceramic on the initial layers which are the same conditions I encountered today. Sibel also located human remains, but so far today we have not. The new trench was laid about 4 meters due Northeast of the H-1 sounding. Bradley helped in laying out the 5 by 5 meter square with a .50 meter baulk. With the two workers assigned to H-2 Mehmet Tahir Erkek (age 27) and Ridvan Bozcalli (age 17) we began cleaning and digging out the top layers of fill using the large pick and shovels. The work is slow and it is a hot day. We will see how much is accomplished at the end of the day. The plan was to take the trench down 50 centimeters today. I selected a location about 20 meters away where the hill drops off for our dirt dump.

The nearest altitude datum point is located in area -G- at 574.65 meters above sea level. The area within the trench is not at the same level and exhibits a difference of almost 40 centimeters between the SE and the NW corners. I hope to level the trench down to about one half meter today and decided not to collect anything on this overburden layer designated as Locus # 1. Our overall research question is for this area will be an attempt to ascertain its relationship to the main habitation areas already located on the main tepe, or perhaps even those of the nearby lower town known to us as area -F-. As the work has progressed throughout the day I have observed extremely low quantities of ceramics, which may be a characteristic of a premium area of cultivation.

A short while after breakfast a third worker was assigned to H-2 Tarik Ozturlu (age 16) and he was mostly used for wheelbarrow duty; needs a lot of training. The remainder of the time we continued using the large pick and shovels to continue taking down the trench. I don’t believe that our main objective today will be achieved.

Worker Score assigning to Cengiz a benchmark score of 10:

Tahir:  5.5

Ridvan: 4

Tarik:  3.5