Aug 13, 2000

Locus 1004 I sent in some bashing crew, which was not perfect, but did a good job, today to excavate this Locus on the East side of the hill. Told them to bash 50 cm, or until find something different. There were not really any interesting feature, but at one point, soil gradually became harder. (about mid-way, I don't know the exact elevation). The soil had variation, some area were hard (but not as hard as the soil in Locus 1005), and had some deep loose soil. I could polk a trowel into some areas easily, but it dis not follow any definate shape, so it was not a pit; cause by washing down of the soil. AFter a while, we reached the white, compacted, silt-like layer, which is almost exactly looks same as the soil of Locus 1005. It was strange that the difference in soil followed the line that I made. I thought the white soil will have a gradual slope, but the loose soil seemed to went down in straight line, except for one area in the center where there is a divot. This was probaby some variation in the soil. The white layer seemed to gradually filled this space as we excavte deeper. I think that thiis could be a trace of ancient land-shape, or caused by mud-slide. The white-compacted soil did had a little slope, but it was not a gradual slope at all. We closed the Locus when we reached the white compacted layer.

Locus 1005 I first thought about excavating the whole West half as I did in Locus 1004, but Andy took a look at D2 and found a possible mud-brick wall at the SW corner of the trench. Since my trench is just south of the D2, this is just 1 m away from the possible mud-brick that I found in NW corner of my trench. So, I decided to scrape off the surface (again) and see what is going on. Last time, the workers did a horrible job on strightening the surface, so I told then to do a better job and I scraped the surface by myself. We took off about 5 to 10 cm or so. There still does not seems to have a mud-brick, although it kind of looks like it in some area. There are grooves in the hard-mud that is filled with loose soil, in stright line, but one here and there. Also, I found a strange discoloration of the soil. When I brush, it looked like a pile of ash, but when I scrape, I found a bluish-gray color. This color is about 10 cm thick and follow a circle. It starts from the edge of NW corner, than curves to south, and curves back to the west balk. It could be a top of an oven, but it is hard to tell at this pint. The soil inside this circle seems to be harder than the soil outside. We ran out of time when I strat seeing this shape, I will see this closely tomorrow.