Today was an especially windy day on site. I began the day with three goals in mind: to clean the T27 extension and further expose the NW-SE running wall that makes up the northern end of the room in T27/T32; to begin peeling back the final level in T32 (the destruction layer which sits directly on top of the clay platform that makes up the bottom of the trench; and to begin drawing the S baulk so that we can begin to remove it on Monday. I opened up a new locus that is the removal of the destruction layer (L20), but was unable to finish the section drawing as we didn't finish this final pass and therefore I can't know the bottom elevations for the S baulk.
During the removal of this destruction layer we came across a black, sticky substance that was associated with (indeed seemed to be soaked into) much of the charred wood form the wall/ceiling collapse. We took samples of this (Adam has them), and suspect this might be bitumen or tar of some sort used for waterproofing (this would certainly explain the intense burning indicated by the destruction level).
We were also visited by Shelby White, Jennifer Chi and Jeff Emberling this afternoon, and once they left we packed up about an hour early since the wind made any work really difficult.