Weekly Summary

Area D, Trench 9

M. Eppihimer

Week 2 – ending July 15, 2004

The work that took place this week can be divided into three main areas:

1.  The eastern half of the trench, where soil containing a topsoil/subsoil mix continues to be removed.
2.  The northern part of the trench, where a large erosional fill sloping down to the NE has been identified in D9, D5, and in the baulk that they share. There are two pebble layers associated with this fill, but we were unable to follow the first during excavation. By the end of the week, the second layer was observable in D9.
3.  The SW corner of the trench, where an oven and its associated surfaces and construction have occupied most of our time. Although initially we were not certain if the ring of orange bricks encircled an oven or an ash pit, excavation within that ring reached a depth of approx. 75 cm and revealed a well-preserved oven with a portion of its bricks baked solid. Inside the oven, four mudbricks were found ringing the floor of the oven – perhaps they served as platforms or pedestals. Outside the oven, a ring of mudbricks two courses high and two or more wide surrounded its top. A packed earthen surface atop mudbricks may run right up to this oven construction. A sloping layer of ash was traced underneath this area of mudbricks, leading to the speculation that the ash was deposited by the oven in an earlier phase and the area was leveled with mudbricks for a second phase, to which the earthen surface belongs. The pottery from inside the oven and from these two surfaces should help with these hypotheses as well as dating the construction, tentatively assigned to the Late Chalcolithic, although perhaps transitional EB.