Began today with the continuation of a 10 cm pass through Locus 20, the cultural fill/tannish mottled clay-y matrix. I believe that we are just above the floor level discovered last year, accounting for the slope, so we continued to screen this locus and look for soil changes. At the bottom of this pass, there was a significant jump in the density of small bits of charcoal, of which I took three okay-sized samples from the NE area of the operation. The matrix also changed, to include some flecks of white which might be leeching from the chalk on the walls/Feature 15. On the edge of the linear stone feature, there are 5 cm wide areas of darker organic-rich soil, potentially from something covering the feature. The change reminded me of last year's excavation of WSAC and the increase in charcoal the closer to the floor, with a slight matrix change. As we go down in Locus 20, the large circular stone found two days ago in the center of the operation looks more like a large base (column?) with a flat top and a seam running through the center.
After lunch the workers finished the pass in Locus 20 and troweled in the area of the NE baulk, where they broke the large rock that had been resting near Feature 15. Underneath this rock were several medium sized stones, which may be associated with the rock tumble excavated last year as Locus 20 in WSAC. I have not seen any indication of a paved floor yet, so it is possible that a clay floor continues from where the paving stopped, near the doorway. The NE baulk is still potentially 10 cm above the floor from last year, so we need to take this down slightly to check if the matrix change seen elsewhere today constitutes the top of a clay floor.
In the afternoon I had the workers finish a 10 cm pass in Locus 21, up to the area of the large storage vessel sherds, Locus 22. Two more sherds of what I believe is the same large reddish brown storage vessel appeared underneath a large stone, which was not removed. The two sherds were added to Locus 22, and were embedded in the same dark, gritty matrix seen in Locus 21, and do not appear to have been on a floor context. If Locus 20 really has come down onto the floor, there is still a large amount of the darker, looser matrix that needs to somehow articulate to the floor.