Monday, 29 July 2019

AM

Torrential rain on Saturday left the trench too wet to excavate. We did not work in T90, in order to let the trench dry out. 

PM

We completed a stratigraphic section drawing of the trench, along gridline 41.50S, between 106.50-109E. This section shows the relationship between bedrock, EPOC4’s floor, and EPOC4’s N foundation wall and helps illustrate that the floor is positioned below, and therefore predates, the construction of the foundation wall.

Once the section drawing was complete, we scraped down the drier parts of the trench to remove the runoff soil from the rainstorm. Following this, the northern part of Locus 29 was dry enough to excavate. For the sake of time, we decided only to excavate north of 44S in Locus 29 to more fully expose the ridge exposed underlying Locus 27. This ridge may form the birm, or wall, of a hut underlying EPOC4, and the surface S of the ridge may be the hut’s floor. Therefore, it is important to expose more of the ridge, so that we can determine if there actually is a hut that predates EPOC4. 

We excavated Locus 29 using trowels, to remove the dark gray, charcoal-rich Locus 29 deposit from atop the olive brown, mottled compacted deposit of the ridge. Soil is loose by claylike, in addition to being dark gray and heavily charcoal included. We are hand-sorting soil in the trench, but soil still is too wet to sieve. We are recovering exceptionally high quantities of slag, along with large amounts of pottery and vitrified terracotta and some bone. We also found a crucible fragment (Find #244), a tondo fragment (Find #245), a large piece of slag that may preserve the profile of the crucible in which it was smelted (Find #246), a piece of ridged pottery (Find #247), a bronze fragment (Find #248), and three fragments of coarseware with adhered slag (Find #249), along with a flange (Find #250) and an odd coarseware rim or flange (Find #251).

Locus 29:

• Tile and plaster: 1/20 bowl
• Pottery: 62 sherds
• Bone: 5 fragments
• Slag: 63 fragments
• Vitrified terracotta: 23 fragments 

Special Finds:

Find #244

• Locus 29
• 108.74E/42.93S
• 26.54m A.E.
• Crucible fragment

Find #245

• Locus 29
• 108.39E/43.75S
• 26.36m A.E.
• Tondo fragment

Find #246

• Locus 29
• 108.81E/43.19S
• 26.43m A.E.
• Slag

Find #247

• Locus 29
• 108.75E/43.70S
• 26.42m A.E.
• Ridged pottery

Find #248

• Locus 29
• 108.48E/43.71S
• 26.33m A.E.
• Bronze fragment

Find #249

• Locus 29
• 108.41E/43.91S
• 26.35m A.E.
• Coarseware with adhered slag

Find #250

• Locus 29
• 108.72E/43.62S
• 26.28m A.E.
• Flange

Find #251

• Locus 29
• 108.34E/43.83S
• 26.31m A.E.
• Coarseware rim