Journal / Summary:F-6-2001-Summary

F6 is a 4 meter x 2 meter trench that was dug in order to give us a better idea of the extent of the site in Area F. The trench sits on the south edge of the rise west of the main Area F concentration. Essentially, it is on the opposite end of Area F, away from all trenches. We placed it on the edge of the hill in order to quickly obtain a profile of the immediate area. We started digging F6 as we would a sounding, wherein we defined arbitrary loci and dug in arbitrary levels. However, as hoped, we hit clear loci that we were able to define and dig separately. Thus, although the trench began as a sounding, many of the loci were dug as they would have been in a normal trench.   

The first two Loci were 6000 and 6001, both contained the topsoil in the north and south parts of the trench. L6002 was the southern third of the trench. We straightened the bottom of this locus. Afterwards, we cut the middle third of the trench and defined the western half as L6003 and the eastern half as L6005. We then dug L6003 such that it was even with the bottom of the trench, as established by L6002. At this point L6003 cut about a 70cm. profile into its eastern half, and the southern side of the western half of L6004. Thus, we were able to see loci that we would be excavating. The most noticeable soil difference that we saw was L6005, an ash pit.

At this point we switched from using the big hand picks to using the smaller, more careful, small hand picks. We removed L6004 wherein we found a burial. Rick sent me one of his guys who was "good" with articulating burials. However, he was a bit overzealous with the hand pick and unfortunately whacked through part of the burial. So, we had Rick come down and take care of what remained in the afternoon. He determined that it was an infant burial. Since only some of the bones were found, he thought that more of it lingered somewhere in the North Baulk.    

We then scraped out the pit, L6005. We screened the majority of this locus and found lots of bone and ceramic. The bottom of L6005 was fairly flat and cut into the East Baulk. Thus, we don't know what the actual size of the pit was. We then brought L6006, just south of L6005, down to level with the bottom of L6005; and then defined that new locus as 6009.

L6007 was another pit that sat just outside of the Western Baulk, north of L6005. L6005 was a redder ash pit, whereas L6007 was a grayer pit. Even though we screened L6007, no artifacts were found. Since this locus sits in the Western Baulk, we really have no idea how large it actually is.

L6008 sat just east of L6007 and north of L6005. Interestingly, this locus was also sterile. At this point, the only loci in the way of a level floor were L6010 and 6011. So, we chose to big pick through them, and bring then down to level. L6010 turned up a lot of pottery and one bag of bones. L6011 contained small pockets of mudbrick with some human bone and ash. Since we were using the big picks, we accidentally disturbed the section of human burial that was within our trench. We infer that the rest of the burial is probably in the North Baulk.     

We went back to using the big picks and removed 50cm. from the southern half of the trench and exposed L6016, a rocky layer that ended up running diagonally (SE corner to NW corner) through the trench. When we got down to this level, all of the loci surrounding L6016 (L6018 and L6019) were showing that sterile, white-splotched, natural soil that we've been finding elsewhere on the Tepe. Thus, Andy and I started thinking that maybe this rocky layer was not cultural. He proposed that maybe it was a natural rock run-off following the natural grade of the hill. In fact, when I excavated it we found very few artifacts, which were limited to the top part of the locus. Just to make sure that we, indeed, were below all cultural material; we excavated the southern quarter of the trench (L6020) another 80cm. Since we didn't find anything cultural, we infered that we were below all human occupation. L6021 and L6022, though defined, were never excavated.

We've decided to draw the North Baulk of F6 because it has the most uniform shape, it is the highest wall, and it best shows most of the stratigraphy. All of the important loci show up in the wall except for L6005, which is a pit that ran from the East Baulk to the West Baulk. The middle depths of the North Baulk show the concentration of human occupation, and also demonstrates the last loci that were natural.

The most important discovery of this trench was that the occupation in Area F tapers out as you go west up the Tepe. It would probably be worthwhile in proceeding seasons to put another sounding, or small trench, between F10 and F1; just to see how consistent the stratigraphy and occupation in this area is.

The last KT number used was 6052, which was obsidian that we discovered associated with the natural rock run-off (L6016). The last actual locus was L6022 (never excavated).