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Code
ICL08.35
Season
2008
Narrative

While cleaning and leveling the loc 8 floor in SLT 8, came across a portion of a horse skull near the NW of the operation at 118.5cm below datum. We also finished loc 7 silty layer south of loc4 wall, coming down on a dense clay floor that will be loc 9. The floor has a pit dug into it that is also lined with clay and goes partly under the loc 4 wall. After removing some of the fill from the pit, I took a soil sample in a big cloth bag for Roman (Ar/Ts.SLT8.10.ss.1). I got a decent carbon sample from the pit (Ar/Ts.SLT8.10.c14.1), but there may be a rodent burrow associated with the pit so I'll be leary of using this one. But I also got a really good carbon sample directly from the loc 9 floor profile at the rim of the pit (Ar/Ts.SLT8.9.c14.1). This is the sample that I select for dating. In the afternoon photographed the loc 8 (with horse skull) and loc 9 floor and pit contexts. At this point the loc 8 floor was a good 15 cm higher than the loc 9 floor, so after removing the skull, I starting digging down into the loc 8 floor at it's eastern edge and came down on the really densely packed surface of the floor. Kept the same locus number for the whole thickness of the floor. On the lower level in the eastern portion of the floor I took another carbon sample (Ar/Ts.SLT8.8.c14.2) at 135cm below datum. While exposing the dense floor level moving west across the locus I exposed a hearth against the locus 11 wall. The hearth feature will be locus 12, and it's about 50cm by 30cm located at 130 below datum. Got a really good carbon sample from this feature (Ar/Ts.SLT8.12.c14.1). Before the end of the day we swept the trench down and took final photos, though the afternoon light was not great, kind of glaring.