Cool morning on site, meaning that the soil was wetter than usual. In T27, a large charcoal sample (in parts of which tree-rings were visible) was removed- but because of the wet soil is was difficult to keep it all in one piece. Instead, I took two samples- one for radiocarbon dating (Ar/Ge.T27.02.14), and one for Roman, which he hopefully can identify to species. As we continued this pass in T27, L02, moving north, Arthur uncovered three flat, white, chalky stones, ~ 0.30 m long, arranged in a box shape. In the center of this is a large stone, which fills the entire box. Adam took a look and said Armine had two similar constructions in her trench, though with nothing in them. I made this L03 and will remove stones during the next pass tomorrow. In the N baulk, 0.30 m from the W baulk we found the half of a bowl. We photographed this ceramic object (in L02) and the white stone box as L03, and removed the bowl. We will dismantle the white stone box tomorrow to see if anything is in it, during out next pass. Towards the end of the day we started a fourth pass in the SW corner about 10 cm deep, and started to come across more and more charcoal. I’m hoping that tomorrow we’ll be able to trace the top of this charcoal layer across the locus, in order to get a better idea for what the topography of the layers in like (since the ashy layer which we’ve been digging through for a few days) has given no indication of this. We also took a soil sample from the SE corner of the trench where Aris found a number of seed and pit (?) samples. Maybe Roman will come across more during floatation. These samples are somewhat problematic since they are near surface (due to the slope, this area of L02 is much closer to the surface than the W part of the trench).
In T22, we’re continuing to excavate L110, in order to both clean the stones in the S end of the locus and better understand how the various wall-like structures relate to one another. In the N part of the locus, just to the E of L108, another pile of small stones is emerging. We’ll clean this and then decide whether we can remove any of them. Perhaps there is an EB terrace wall here after all?