Daily Trench Journal

Area F

Trench 1

July 14, 2002

Began the day by spraying with the water sprayer. The water allowed us to see very clearly the two walls (L1069 and L1073) that we have already named as new loci. We were also able to see another couple of areas where bricks look to exist, especially in the far SE corner of the trench in L1065. This area I did not name a new locus yet, since there is some debate as to whether or not this is a continuation of the wall L1069 or if it is a separate entity. Basically I am just staying away from that area of the trench for the time being. We’ll sort out that mudbrick later.

The spraying also seemed to confirm that what we had in the middle of the trench was a pit. One part of the trench was a much darker ashy gray than the rest of the trench. In addition, next to this gray ash was a darker black material, which was also very soft. These were in fact both parts of the same pit, although the ashy layer appeared to be the top layer of the pit. We also could not tell if the pit continued underneath some slumpy fill, which still was next to it, and maybe this slump was hiding it. We removed this slump as L1074, the same fill locus as yesterday. We gave the pit L1075 and the name of "Africabumbata" because the shape of the pit ended up looking eerily similar to the African continent. The pit continued down for about twenty centimeters and then the very soft black dirt became harder and browner and we knew that our pit was coming to an end. The pit was an okay pit, but there was only a small amount of pottery coming out of it and a very small amount of bones.

It looks as though the pit may have actually begun a couple of cm further down than we had originally anticipated, so we pushed down the area around the pit, and indeed just about the entire trench, down a couple of cm’s to try to match the elevation where the pit began. It looks as though there may be a surface next to the pit, but we will have to check that out on the 16th.

So, as can be seen we have a rather large pit, two pretty distinct walls, and a lot of fill that may be hiding a surface. It would be nice to find the surfaces associated with the pit and the walls. We will do that in the next couple of days, assuming there are a next couple of days.

CM