Trench D6 Daily Journal      August 19, 2002

Our main goals for today were to remove as much of the L20 complex (L20, 24-28, 5, 6, 14, 10, 16) as possible with as much detail as possible and to remove and document all slag from these areas.

L20/chamber 27

We continued down (having not finished yesterday), first finding another layer of pottery in similar orientation under the one previously visible on the top of L20/27, and then continuing down. The pillar of the structure of chamber 27 was built of exterior mudbrick walls and filled with unconsolidated but very hard fill.

L46

We designated L46 as the surface found under South portion of wall L5. This surface continued through the wall of L5, and gave evidence that L5 is the wall of a pit, baked hard and slag covered. L46 is very similar to the other surfaces we have found, although we cannot see very much of it.

L47

We designated L47 as the curving line of rocks extending from the back (NW corner) of L20 out to the N and W. It consists of mixed stones founded on mudbricks, just above L48.

L48

L48 is the large pile of rocks directly beneath L47. It’s fairly disorganized but might be the end of a large wall with 3 rows running towards the West, although half a meter square is not much to go by.

L16

We removed the first course of large stones finding about 5cm of mudbricky fill before the lower course of smaller stones. We then removed these finding a hard light mudbricky material (L52) and the continuation of surface 30.

L10

We removed the rocks of L10, and also discovered that they continue into L20, terminating under chamber L25. This row of rocks does not quit line up with those in L27 and across, although it’s still possible this is the same wall as L16.

L14 and L44

We designated L44 as the mudbrick etc collapse between what appeared to be a grey continuation of the wall from L20 and more consolidated material to the south. We at first believed it to be the North wall of L14 itself or that it was collapse jut inside that wall, but instead learned that it was probably debri inside the larger furnace structure of L20. I still have belief that the upper portions of L14 were used as a small single chamber furnace, perhaps after the large L20/L14/L6 unit was abandoned, but this will be up to further investigation to determine.

L23

We briefly revisited this locus to remove the southern buttress from L20, and did not notice any mudbrick structure here at all, surprisingly.

L20/27/50

A biggie. We continued to push down and clean all around, and realized that there was material blocking the front of the front wall of L27. We had not noticed this before as it had appeared that the walls of L20 extended onto this fill. It may be that they did at some stage of the furnaces use life, but that it also once extended down further into the pit L29 area. We excavated this new material as L50 quickly (in one stage) to reveal the front wall of L27 covered in a variety of slag in a very similar manner to that on L25. We however left the material from L50 to the north (and east) of this area (In front of the junction between l20 and L6 to be excavated next year, the idea being that we may have more questions to answer, and having some part intact may be a good idea. There appears to be much slag in the area. This locus may appear confusing on the dayplans as it was designated and excavated so quickly. It begins in front of L27, extending out to the "bottleneck" between L29 and pit L6 (east of chamber/wall L6).

L20 slag removal

At the end of the day we began removal of all the slag on the walls of L20 and continuing down into pit L29 (although classified as KTs from L20, as there was no break in the material from the upper portions to the lower. We documented elevations and locations through marking printouts of photographs to document this removal. The material was extremely hard and underneath we found soil of amazing reds and browns, very mixed.