Today was mostly spent cleaning and trying to ascertain the extent of the doorway in the partition wall between rooms WSAC and WSAD. In the morning, the crew of 5 worked to sweep and clean the surface of Locus 22 for photographs of the floor, both with the rockpile in the SW baulk, and again without it. Some of these rocks are clearly embedded in the new locus and created depressions in the flat surface of the rest of the operation. Lori took photographs around 1 pm with the rocks in, and then I did again shortly afterwards with the rocks removed. I then took 5 soil samples from Locus 22, one from each corner and one from the center, and plan to excavate half of the trench, lengthwise, to bedrock, to catch a floor profile in the baulk.
In WSAD, two main projects took up most of our focus. The first was to clean the opening in the partition wall to expose more of the gap, or doorway, and to see the extent of the blockage from both sides. Both Locus 20 (the overburden in this wall area) and Locus 22 (the browner soil underneath) were removed, as well as several smaller rocks and three larger ones, two of which were broken by the crew. After their removal, the doorway seems more convincing as a) there is a very large stone now visible, in what would have been the NE face of the door passageway, and b) a lot of empty spaces in this area, filled with a matrix full of sherds, suggests a later fill than the wall. It is interesting to note the different methods for blocking the door from each room- in WSAC, it appears carefully constructed with flat stones laid on top of one another, whereas in WSAD it is more of a haphazard jumble of rocks that spilled into the room. Lori decided also to keep three stones that makeup the SE wall in WSAC, but which are clearly sitting on soil and not rock, in order for Hazmik to draw them. We removed dirt in this area until we reached two large stones, in a somewhat stepped arangement, leading to the floor of WSAD.
Also in WSAD, I opened Locus 21 as the removal of the medium brown/tan clay matrix in the trench, in a 1 by 3 meter area extending from the NE wall, in order to expose more of Feature 16/Locus 17. One 7-10 cm pass did reveal another course of stones underneath the ones already visible, so we did another pass in the afternoon. This pass is beginning to show a more mottled surface, with splotches of orange, and a whiter clay near the stones of the wall. The feature itself now appears to consist of an arrangement of stones connected to the NE wall of the room, with additional stones, laid flat, in its interior, suggesting a potential compartmentalization. At the end of the day I swept this area and there is a question of how exactly it relates to a floor, as the elevation is still higher than in WSAC.