July 26, 2001

Week 4 Weekly Summary

The burial L1021 was finally completely excavated. I still have not removed the locus from dayplans because I have taken the areas around the former burial down to the same level so that we can tell where we need to divide the soil into new loci. We are planning on making a complete study and evaluation of my trench at the beginning of the week, and at that time I will have new loci in this area, as well as maybe in other areas.

L1019 had two large soft areas which we felt were probably animal burrows, that we were excavating as part of L1019. After their excavation it looks instead as though they are actually pits which we excavated. These pits had some pottery and bones, and they were listed as part of L1019.

This week did not give me any exciting small finds. The most exciting thing about the week is that we saw the beginnings of a brick wall, one column wide so far, each brick about 25cm wide and 10cm long, which goes from the east baulk towards the west baulk for 1.26 meters. This wall lays to the south side of what we felt may have been an oven, since it appeared to have a wall bordering it on the south side as well as the west side. Unfortunately, when we dug the oven area it was very hard and did not give me hardly any artifacts. It may not be an oven after all.

There are brick protrusions showing up in several places, in L1026, L1019, L1025. We hope that we are able to see how these brick protrusions, and their possible continuation, relate to each other. In the coming week we want to see if we can come up with better context for the trench, instead of merely alternating which loci are chopped down 10 cm at a time.

This week was difficult because of the lack of exciting finds, but looking at the baulks we can see that even though there have been no small finds we have dug down quite a ways, and we know that we will find some surfaces and more walls soon, along with more artifacts.