August 4, 2001

Today was a fun day, as the entire day was spent going across the trench taking out fill areas and taking them down to the level of the black ashy layer of L1037. We are still unsure as to whether this is a pit or a floor or something else, but we do know that it is very large. I will try to describe the discoveries and observations of the area as we uncovered it today in a little story I like to call...

The Uncovering of Locus 1037

We reached the site this morning in a great mood. I was excited because I knew that we would have the chance to uncover more of the black ashy layer of doom, and also because I felt better than I had in a week, my sun fever finally seems to be subsiding. Although I will call this area the black ashy layer, when I actually Munselled the soil it was disappointingly a "very dark grayish brown." Close to black, but not quite. We started the day by chopping down in L1034, the half that remained of it, so that we could get to the level of the black ashy layer. This was relatively easy, as we could see in section exactly where the black ashy layer would begin, so we just went down to that level in L1034. This took some time, as we had to go down almost 20 cm to get down to the level of the black ashy layer. In L1034, in the area just above the black ashy layer, we found some very nice pottery that may be related to the black ashy layer. The majority of these pottery sherds came out of the last 5 cm before we actually hit the black ashy layer. We gave this bag of pottery KT1182 in L1034, but as I said there may be a relation to the black ashy layer L1037. Also found today was some iron slag, emanating from the same area just above the black ashy layer in L1034. A couple of the people most experienced with iron slag, Lynn and Jonathan, came down to see the slag. They felt it was a pretty good sample of iron slag on burned bricky stuff.

Later, after several in progress shots of the progression of the black ashy layer, we continued our progression towards the south baulk by taking down the general fill area of L1032 down to the layer of the black ashy layer. In this area we found a number of pot sherds grouped together, ostensibly forming a potsmash. We have left these pottery sherds in situ for the time being.

Also, we cut back on the L1033 slightly, so that we are exactly at the point where the wall ends. Actually, what we have been referring to as the large wall or even the "Wonder Wall" may not be a wall at all. As we cut the division between the loci straight up to the wall, it appears that the black ashy layer continues underneath the wall, which makes us think that it is not a wall, and probably is instead a pavement. It is still an impressive pavement though.

L1037, the black ashy layer, now extends over 2.6 meters from the North baulk and goes about 1.4 meters out from the west baulk. In the far northwest corner there appears to be what may be a pit, which is a different color than the rest of the black ashy layer, as it is a lighter gray. There are some areas of this black ashy layer which appear to be lightly streaked in yellow, as well as some areas which appear to be a darker black. We will continue to extend and grow our huge black ashy layer in the days to come.