Daily Trench Journal

Area H, Trench 2

May 24, 2005

M. Baldi

We again began by 6 am, the temperature is pleasant and is plenty light. The workers today are: Cengiz Ildeniz, Idris Yilmaz, and Ercan Gunes. We started by cleaning and readying for photos. Once this was completed we started on the removal of Locus 4 first, after which we may remove Locus 3 also. When we do we will collect the contents within the wall as a separate locus from those found on top. But after leveling Locus 4 to the same level as the bottom of the pit Locus 5 I decided to instead bring that area down to the same level as Locus 6. For better control these materials will be collected as Locus 7 as they may signal a contemporary level. After studying the wall (L # 3) carefully I determined to remove it. These materials were collected as Locus 8. While proceeding with this work it began to appear as if this wall was built on top of another or of a floor where fragments of mortar stones began appearing from either used in wall construction or discarded on a surface. I decided as this time to change the locus number and collect separately. Some of the pottery from within Locus 8 or from Locus 9 appears to be Early Bronze.

Following breakfast we were delighted to receive 3 distinct rain showers with the second one packing a good punch of rain, thunder, and lightning. Temperatures cooled down but the high winds began to rip the tents and they had to be taken down. We continued on two projects, one to level the wall down to what appeared to be either a new wall or foundation, and taking the rest of the trench (now on the same locus) deeper still.

So far this trench has not yielded much and we could be abandoning it in the next few days. We’ll see how the next couple of days go.