We worked a half day today because of rain. The morning started by finishing the excavated dirt of locus 03 of WSI2, upon Elizabeth's request. In WSN, I started a new locus (13) on the top of the southeast wall. We continued to work on locus 12 in the west corner of the room, and also opened a new locus (14) in the area just adjacent to what was locus 11. This locus 14 is the usual dark brown silt just below topsoil.
Given that locus 12 is revealing the medium brown silt at a higher elevation than did locus 11, I am ever more convinced that this matrix is somehow associated with the surfacing or superstructure (or both) of the walls. We have a consistent pattern whereby this lighter deposit is encountered at a higher elevation and greater depth in the areas adjacent to the walls, and occurs deeper if not at all toward the center of the room. Indeed, the visible section that I left in the middle of the room is most revealing, for it shows this lighter deposit tapering off toward the middle of the room. If this is the case, than several previous conclusions are undermined: namely, locus 07 is probably not a floor and the possible feature, or alignment of stones, is wall fall that has coincidentally fallen in some sort of alignment. Yet other questions still prevail. Namely, why are there specs of charcoal in this matrix? In other respects, the deposit appeared to be a floor, at least in the area of the southeast wall. I think the best way to proceed at this point is to take down a bit more of the room to the level of locus 11 (leaving a strip in the northern area for a profile drawing). I will then continue to go down to the floor in the west quadrant of the room, leaving the area of locus 07 for last. Hopefully we'll identify what is clearly a floor. In the meantime, I continue to mull over Ruben's suggestion that there was some later, short-lived activity in the southeast area of the room that accounts for the apparent and ephemeral floor matrix.