Weekly Trench Summary

Area F Trench 9

Week 3

J. Vidar

I worked on pit L9045 during the first part of this week. The important thing to note here is that I went to far on the western side of this pit. The actual bottom would have been more in line with that of L7146 in F7 – the other half of the pit.

The vast majority of the week however was spent working with the L9049 surface and the associated features. Primarily the L9052 wall, the threshold / door socket in the middle north section of L9046, and the Plaster surface L9051. Here is my interpretation of what was going on here:

L9049 was an organic material storage facility bordered on the western side by L9052 Рa wall constructed of half pis̩ and half mud brick. The first row (closest L9049) was of Pis̩ construction and the white pseudomorph of L9049 can actually be seen fused to the side of this row. This was followed by a row of mud bricks which were separated by a thin (1 cm) line of green material. This second row might have been followed by a third row also of mud brick construction but it was not very clear. In the Northern part of the center of L9046 was a threshold entrance to this storage area. I believe this because the ground just to the west of the door socket was harder packed and a raised surface compared to the surrounding area and it had the organic material rising up on it. Just south of the threshold were fragments of a plaster surface which I believe was the outside surface associated with this storage room. While it is poorly preserved and sloping down at a large angle, this might be attributed to another possible pit below it. The sinking of the center of the L9049 surface turned out to be caused by just such a pit (L9055). The L9049 surface itself was actually a packed mud surface with the white pseudomorph impressed onto it. The pseudomorph was also several layers thick at some points possibly showing that this area was used for this at different times or maybe overall several harvest seasons. One last thing to note was that L9049 was cut by the L9045 pit Рhowever, it appeared as though the L9049 surface had its own burned edge right at the edge of the larger, later pit. Perhaps this could mean that the pit L9045 was built on a smaller earlier pit that was associated with L9049.

I took a HAP sample of L9049 and L9051. The L9051 surface was to small for a proper sample however so I removed the whole .75 by .5 surface.