Today we dug down Locus 19, the still-dark, silty matrix on the SW side of the trench, partly to delineate its boundary with Locus 17. We also dug down the pedestal in Locus 17 and found that what we dug through yesterday is a packed orange clay arm that seems to be surrounding a feature (Locus 20) that has pieces of ceramic--what yesterday I was calling 'hearth' pieces. The feature is only about 8-10 cm from the NE wall and extends for 1.3 m x .75 m, if you include the clay feature in addition to the standing ceramic pieces and stones. In addition, I found a tube/pipe-shaped object not far from Locus 20. It is resting on two stones, and also on a light, clayey matrix that is quite packed. I hate to say it's a floor--it hardly seems low enough--but it does seem to be an interesting matrix. We did not have time today to do anything but explore the extent of the pipe-shaped object. We'll continue to dig around it tomorrow.