Daily Trench Journal

Area C

Trench 1

July 23, 2002

I have been away from the trench for two days and feel a bit behind. Today the goal is to take the eastern portion down to level with (or at least close to this) the central part of the trench (L1082). If nothing spectacular shows up in this part of the excavation they I will put one worker on L1083, which is the mudbrick architecture below L109, and the other worker on L1071, which is the possible wall foundation in the center of the trench. During the removal of L1082 in the northern corner a different type of pottery began to appear that is much more fine than that which is generally found here. Two pieces especially caught my attention, one was a small greenish fragment with incising and the other was a small rim shard of a particular shape with a beaded rim and a sharp turn in the body shape (cup-like). There was also an interesting hammerhead type rim that the top of the rim was slightly concave.

L1083 did not come up with much today. It is still the very dense and compact bricky material with little artifacts contained there. The mudbrick continues down and will be excavated to a further extent tomorrow.

L1071 was started with a 3x20cm slice taken out of the western step of the locus to get at fresh dirt linking the top level with the bottom where mudbrick seems to be present. Separate KTs will be assigned for the artifacts removed from this slice than those that will be removed from the top excavation. The dense pottery fill seems to rest on top of a similar mudbrick foundation as is found in L1083. Then I began by having Ibrahim take down the locus 3-4 cm from the south towards the north. This will get more dense in the north since that area is significantly higher than the southern area. After finishing approximately half of this locus a great deal of pottery was retrieved, mostly in at all angles, nothing flat lying suggesting a surface. Also this pottery is the usual kind for the most part for this area, none of the finer samples that were found in the NE corner. Mudbrick does appear under this layer of fill and will be explored more tomorrow.