Last week at Tsaghkahovit, so mostly concerned today with ascertaining nature of floor and doorway area in WSAD so that we can begin closing the operation. Started in the morning cleaning the northern and eastern areas, in order to investigate extent of locus 29, paved floor. However the area is really confusing, as there exists a strange mixture of aerated brown soil, hardpacked yellow and orange mottled clay, and much more dense and hardpacked reddish clay, which seems to be leaking from an area along the NE wall. This mixture of matrices is furthermore interesting and confusing due to a number of stones, some laid flat while others appear to be rock fall. After cleaning this area in the morning, it became too dry to read the texture/color changes, so we left this area until tomorrow. It is perhaps likely that the clay leaking into this area is from Feature 16, the linear stone feature, or some later clay floor that was too ephemeral in the rest of the operation to be noticed. There is an area in the NE wall, underneath one of the stones of the bottom course, that shows two lenses of an orange clay, roughly even with the top course of Feature 16.
In the morning the guys also broke one very large stone that was covering Feature 27, the semicircular basin type object embedded in the paved floor. After removing this stone, and several other small ones that had made up the blockage of the doorway, we cleaned this area and continued to excavate feature 27. The matrix under these stones, which I declared Locus 31, was a brownish clay, and Feature 27 soon materialized as an almost circular feature with a unique internal compartmentalization, almost in a trilobate arrangement. Also, it is not completely circular but ends about three quarters of the way, and continues slightly as a hardpacked clay. What this feature was meant for is unclear, although it is more convincing as a reused object for the floor. More needs to be cleaned tomorrow to understand more of its placement in the doorway. Inside the feature were several whole bones, but not much else, and no recoverable charcoal remains, although one was taken from the outside, in Locus 31.
In the afternoon I declared Locus 32 in WSAD as the area of darker soil running along the SE baulk, and abutting the paved stone floor, Locus 29. The matrix is much darker than Locus 21, but not as loamy as the overburden, although it is likely a continuation of the overburden. The matrix sits directly on top of another row of flat stones, presumably part of the paved floor. However, these stones are lower than Locus 29, and one in particular along the SW baulk seems to be under a stone of the upper paved floor, perhaps suggesting a step, erosion, or an earlier paved floor that went out of use. Locus 32 was excavated about 2 meters up the SE baulk, and will likely continue into the eastern corner, as this area is still much darker than the northern corner. I did take a charcoal sample from Locus 32, in the southern corner, a couple cm above the newly uncovered floor stones.