Today was a slightly more hectic day as I had most of Lori and Elizabeth's workers as well as my own in both operations, WSAD and WSAC, simultaneously excavating and cleaning paved stone floors in each room. In the morning, WSAC was cleaned again and the area of stones extending from the doorway on top of the stone floor was the main priority. These were cleaned, photographed, and drawn, and partly excavated, to ascertain the nature of the arrangement and the relation between these stones and the floor, wall, and doorway. The stones do not appear to be random rock fall, and in several angles they seem to be arranged in artificial ways, including a circular composition that resembles a kromlech (Lori and Ian's suggestion) or a linear continuation of Feature 26 along the SE wall, or a raised platform jutting out from the blocked doorway. At the end of the day four stones were removed and a soil sample was taken from this stone feature, declared Locus 30, and a broken groundstone was discovered. The stones have a lighter brown, more yellowish silty clay matrix between them, but little in the way of artifacts.
In WSAD, the extra workers began by removing the rest of Locus 21 (see sketch), the hard packed tan/brown matrix seen in the northern and eastern areas of the operation and extending down to the area in front of the doorway in the west and the wheelbarrow ramp. Almost immediately, stones that make up a flat paved floor began appearing in the western corner in front of the doorway. Feature 27 also appeared, which is part of a circular stone basin/large mortar embedded in the floor at a slightly lower level and directly beneath two large stones that make up the SW wall, or the blockage of the doorway. The basin therefore dates to an earlier phase, after which the door (or possibly niche) was filled in, or the partition wall was extended. I took a soil sample from this feature. I also managed another couple of charcoal samples, especially a large one about 15 cm above the level of the floor (Ar/Ts.WSAD.21.C14.03). After revealing the paved floor, we took out the wheelbarrow ramp, which I declared as Locus 28 and which consisted of the very dark loamy soil of the overburden. Beneath this matrix more stones of the paved floor appeared, unlike in WSAC where a thick layer of silty clay existed between the overburden and the floor. I declared the built floor as Locus 29, and the workers began at the end of the day to clean between the stones. Interestingly, this paved stone floor does not appear to extend northeast to the other wall of the room, nor to Feature 16 (the linear row of stones) in the eastern corner, unlike in WSAC. It also does not extend to the SE baulk, where there still remains an area of much darker matrix.
Plans for tomorrow are to continue excavating WSAC.30 and to clean the surface of WSAD to find the extent of the paved floor, and to see if we can get any material from the actual stones, and potentially to begin opening more of the doorway to reveal WSAD.27.