Trench D6 Daily Summary      August 20, 2002

Our Final Day

Ah yes, the cool morning breeze over D6, with its many varied loci and levels, enough to confuse these small mortals. Today we will put it to rest and clean the confusion and mess left from a week of frenzied removal and recording. We apologize in advance for the complicated state which we leave D6.

L20

L20/25 remained, and we pulled that down without much ado. The material here ws very similar to chamber 27, with bricks surrounding a very hard fill in the interior. This fill was empty of artifacts. Underneath this "pillar" the hard bottom course/brick line denoting the edge of the firing chamber was left, clearly showing the edge of the furnace and the connection with L14.

The bottom courses of L20 also remained in the far N and S. these are the parts that connected the 5 main chambers with the auxillary chambers L14 and L6. As noted elsewhere, these have revealed that L20 is of a different shape than we previously thought, and that there was not hard boundary between L20 and these two chambers. Under the northern portion (connecting to L6) we found continuation of L53. More under the L53 chapter. The southern portion (connecting L20 with L14) was also one course, less well defined than the northern one, setting on top of surface L17.

L10

We removed the mud brick pedestal/course which separated the stones of L10 from the surface L17, taking it to the current elevation of L17 and L49. Upon doing this we examined the soil and found no difference between lower course material and the material in L49 (the suspected foundation trench), and so closed L10 at this level and expanded L49 to include this material. This area of hard whitish material extends all the way under the chamber L20/25, ending at the large stone just south of L53.

L8

We removed the Southern spur of this to clean things up and to get a clear section to better understand L49. We expected to find the surface L37 continuing under this area but did not. Instead we found an area relatively empty of material (new locus 56), but otherwise quite similar to the standard fill we have found earlier. The most interesting thing about the revelation is that L37 stops at roughly the same place as L17, which may be further evidence of a relatively short use period, or at least that the same concerns/realities/etc were faced by the peoples of L17 as the peoples of L37.

L6

We believed we did not reach the far northern boundary of the pit L6, and so removed the debri in this area (starting with a few mixed mudbricks and stones at the level of L30). Our belief was correct, and we removed the debri in two stages, going first 12 cm and then 60, finding material of similar nature/etc as that in the rest of pit L6. We saved all artifacts but did not take a soil sample. The northern boundary of pit L6 was of similar nature to that in the North in general, hard with very broken mixed sides.

The Sleepers

(new, unexcavated, and not explained above) loci are as follows:

Locus 51 is an area of ash under the Northeast corner of floor L30. It may either be an ash layer or a pit, we only can see about half a meter square of it at the moment. We took a sample and the Eastern boundary appeared to be of a harder bricklike material, however we do not have the time to explore this.

L52 is an area of hard whitish material found under portions of L20 and the wall of L6. On its Northern and eastern boundaries are the surface L30. It appears to be relatively devoid of artifacts, and has a smooth clean character.

L53 is the chunky, more grey area just to the south of L52. It is directly (but not perfectly) under L20. The soil here is chunky with a somewhat broken appearance. Surface 17 and L49 are at its Southern boundary.

L54 is the new surface at the bottom of pit L6, similar in appearance to L17 and L37.

L55 is the brick/hard lump at the Southern boundary of L54, in the bottom of L6 pit.