A lot going on today in both operations, WSAC and WSAD. One large stone that had been left near the edge of the trench had been pushed into the southern corner overnight. In the morning, half of the crew of 6 worked in WSAD, removing Locus 14, the hardpacked brown clay, in the center area of the trench. At the same time the other two workers (a sixth arrived around 11 am) cleaned more thoroughly the tops of the walls in both operations to allow Hazmik to accurately draw the architecture. This cleaning took the first half of the day. Also before lunch, the guys broke three large stones that had been resting along the SE baulk of WSAD (see sketch of 7/21/10. Underneath these rocks was the very dark soil matrix of Locus 13.
After lunch, I opened several new loci to account for the cleaning and soil changes occurring in both trenches. In WSAC, Locus 21 is the area of darker, hardpacked clay soil in the western corner, west of the browner matrix of Locus 17 and west of the wheelbarrow ramp. The guys spent the afternoon continuing to remove Locus 17 through screening, but did not actually remove any of Locus 21, nor in the southern corner of the trench, in the area of the rockfall in the 'doorway.' In fact at the end of the day, without my knowledge, they changed the wheelbarrow ramp into 'stairs,' unfortunately creating a mixture of artifacts from the overburden and the brown matrix beneath it, which I added to the ceramics bag of Locus 19 (the overburden of the ramp removed 7/24/10.
Locus 22 (declared today but not actually excavated) is the surface exposed by removing Locus 17 which Lori suggested is a floor context, or one of multiple floors in this room. While a couple of the stones of the NE wall in particular appear to continue beneath this layer, the amount of charcoal, artifacts, and mottled areas of soil suggest that it is a floor context. It will be more clear, likely, with the removal of the stones in the southern corner, allowing us to see the actual nature of the doorway. One piece of charcoal taken 7/26/10 from this surface was changed from Locus 17 to Locus 22.
In WSAD, the removal of Locus 14 led to a couple soil changes in the southwestern area of the trench, between the wheelbarrow ramp and the partition wall and 'doorway.' Locus 15 was declared as the removal and shortening of the wheelbarrow ramp, and therefore a mixture of brown and blacker soil, where locus 13 and 14 meet in the center of the trench. Locus 18 was similarly declared as an area of darker soil, but still hardpacked and therefore unlike the overburden, in the area abutting the SW baulk near the 'doorway.' This small locus- not the doorway itself, but at the same level as Locus 14- produced the incised bone spindle whorl, Ar/Ts.WSAD.18.B.01.
In the eastern corner of the trench, an interesting stone feature appeared once troweled, that constitutes a linear arrangement of what seem to be smaller stones laid flat. The arrangement seems to connect to the NE wall, about 1.6 m in from the NE baulk. However the elevation in WSAD is not as deep as WSAC, so it is surprising to think that this feature is resting on a floor. The feature itself was declared as Locus 16, and includes a yellow-orange matrix between the row of stones. The soil that is bracketed by these stones and the stones of the NE wall was declared Locus 17, and was photographed, and two bags of soil were taken for analysis. The soil matrix is a highly mottled one, with elements of orange and yellow brown as well as a darker, more organic brown and a grayish white. This feature, interestingly, rests beneath what was feature 11, the row of three larger stones in the overburden. It is therefore confusing, since a gap of at least 5-10 cm was evident between the two stone arrangements. At the end of the day I was only able to trowel a bit of this locus, and plan to fully excavate it tomorrow. It is possible that some of the mottled nature of the matrix is due to leaching of a plaster or other type of coating from the stones of the NE wall.