Daily Trench Journal

Area F

Trench 21

June 11, 2005

J. Nijhowne

We began the day by finishing the excavation of the child burial. We carefully screened the matrix around the bones using small meshed round screens. By doing this we recovered many teeth as well as other bone fragments. We also took another soil sample, KT10. We screened the sample onto large sacks so we could remove bone fragments but not contaminate the matrix. This matrix appeared to have a lot of ash mixed into it. No artifacts of any kind were found. There was a flat sherd right at the base of the pit and a flat piece of bone was sitting directly on it. It may have been part of the skull. We cleaned the pit for photos and took elevations. The pit had been cut through cultural levels and into virgin soil.

Since the purpose of this trench was to uncover the surface in the east baulk of F6, it was disappointing to have a huge pit cut right through it. Since no clear surface could be discerned in the pit profile, I decided to mark out a 1x1 meter square in the area most likely to contain the floor. I did this by having my workers stand in F6 at the north and south end of the surface. That way I could easily see where the surface was most likely to extend into F21, see plan view. We marked out a 1x1 meter square with nails and string and I called this locus 8 and the remainder of the trench locus 7. We started excavating locus 8 carefully with hand picks. All we found was dirt with some gravel, small stones, and cobbles but nothing that remotely looked like a living surface. The stones did not form a continuous surface and looked like they were spread randomly across the square. We paid close attention to elevations but still couldn’t find it.