KENAN TEPE

Area F

Trench 15

July 17, 2002

After thoroughly cleaning the trench I put Debbie who is on site today to help me work the rocks at locus 2, as they appear to be in several courses we worked on articulating each layer and photographing it before removing it. Two layers were present with a third one possibly signaled by what Andy Creekmore the Assistant Director called the largest rock found to date in F area. We collected soil samples from in between the rocks and something akin to plaster right on the bottom of the larger cobbles, but I think this is only decaying of rock minerals. We left the larger rock in situ and noticed that to each side of it there were two interesting features, one looks like a conglomerate rock but with a very sandy constitution to it, this one is to the South of the large rock and was given locus 10. To the North of the rock and mostly in the baulk there is a similar formation but with perhaps more finer pebbles and with more sand. Both of these formations are shaped like a square brick. Both were also difficult to Munsell but they are light grayish with a fine to medium composition.

We also worked on cleaning and articulating the surface L 6 which we found spreads over a larger area than previously thought.

On the pit L 5 we retook measurements including what looked like rodent burrows at the very base of it something that extended the depth as I also took one at the very deepest.

The hard packed surface inside locus 4 was sectioned off with its own locus number (L 9), but we will have to wait until later to see its relation to the cobbles abutting it. The area South of the pit was divided into two loci locus 7 immediately South of the pit and locus 8 after the first cobbles to the South baulk. These loci may in fact be part of the same locus but due to the larger quantity of rocks on the South end I wanted to separate for better control.

We picked a nice ceramic base from the baulk that was ready to fall, there is also another one at depth 570.49 which we will take out tomorrow as we excavate more in that area.

A busy day in a busy trench.