Daily Journal

Area D, Trench 9

M. Eppihimer

July 20, 2004

We are starting with another pass in L26 of about 15 cm, leaving a ring around the oven as before in L22. No changes are observed so we go down another 10 cm.

Second, inside the oven the four protruding bricks were removed and found to be sitting on a layer of ash. Once all of this was swept, the ground level of the oven sloped down to from the E to the W. It is packed mud with a few brick chunks. The ashy soil continues in the NW corner of the oven so we are removing the baulk to see where it goes. This significantly increases the diameter of the oven – currently 1.40 m. To finish the oven excavation, we have to extend the loci into D5 where necessary. For now, only the ashy interior L20 is being removed from D5.

A 15 cm pass in the mud floor of the oven (Locus 30) produced more mud and one defined block of orange mud.

A surface excavated in D5 as L5194 has appeared in D9 next to the oven in the NW, where it runs up to the edge, but appears to be cut into by the oven. It is also cut in its north so it has a triangular shape of only 0.43 by 0.4 cm. Some mud was on top of this surface and then the oven’s burnt brick lining. If this surface date is Ubaid, we know that the oven was cut into it so we should not expect any surfaces beneath it to belong to the oven. We’ll have to check the D5 pottery.

Elsewhere, the brick ring of L22 seems to be deposited on top of redeposited virgin soil. Lastly, no bottom feeding hole appears, although it is possibly in the S baulk if it exists at all.

Having reached the bottom of the oven construction, we have decided to close the trench for the season. The rest of the trench consists of a number of fill loci without contexts worth pursuing in the last two days of the digging season.