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Code
LK11.27
Season
2011
Narrative

The situation in WSN locus 65 is quite frustrating. In some respects it appears to be pit like, and associated with the floor across the rest of the room. In the first instance, the matrix above the feature (if it can be called that) was looser than the rest of the floor, which is what prompted us to excavate down in the first place. Also, within the area there are some defined boundaries that suggest a pit. Most notable, two walls (or lines of stones), one of which runs parallel to the northwest wall of the room and is at least two courses high (with the lower course being nicely worked in an almost semi-circular fashion) and a second line of stones that runs perpendicular to the former, jutting into the room. Also, there is what appears to be a sterile clay lining to the "feature" in some areas, though this is very irregularly shaped. And where this clay lining is absent, as toward the eastern area, we instead can see in the section an interesting stratigraphic pattern, which a tannish clay matrix topped by a yellowish clay, which is in turn topped by the tannish clay of the "main" floor. So in this respect, the "feature" instead appears to be an earlier floor. But then this leaves unexplained the sterile yellowish orange clay lining that seems to bound the "feature" in places. Spent much of the day worrying over this situation, and finally decided to arbitrarily square off the "feature" in the eastern end where things are particularly unclear and leave the context intact until after Lilit has drawn the interior of the room. We will then pursue it further. If it turns out to be a feature associated with the "main" floor, then it can be added into the drawing. If it is instead an earlier occupation level, it will demand a drawing of its own. Elsewhere in WSN, we spent much of the day today cleaning the southeastern half of the room in preparation for photos. I created a new locus, 66, for any materials collected in the room in the course of this cleaning. I later created two additional loci, 67 and 68, for the built features (workstations?) in the south and east corners of the trench (respectively). Separate loci have yet to be created for each of the stone features that make up these larger elements. We also returned to what was locus 38 today and the area of the flagstone floor. After photographing a cluster of small stones that always seemed a bit out of place (toward the southern end of the flagstone floor), I removed them and indeed found the continuation of the stone floor (in the form of one more large slab). This area still requires a bit more probing and cleaning, particularly as there is a groundstone sitting atop the floor and amidst other smaller stones. We also continued in locus 58, cleaning and removing some of the sherds embedded in the matrix of this area. In general, it is by now clear that a great deal of activity took place in this room, in at least 4 or more stations of various sorts. Today we removed the sherds of the large storage vessel in the pit of locus 57 (which, to make things yet more complicated, may not be a pit after all in so far as some of the stone that lines it no longer appear to be carved bedrock but distinct stones, particularly towards the western side of the "pit"). Work continued in WSM3 today as well. After taking photos of the jumble of stones against the northeast wall, we removed these (the actual course of the wall was peeking through in places, making it fairly easy to determine that most of these small stones were wall fall, or otherwise not in situ). Have yet to make the same determination along the northwest wall, where large boulders are curiously absent and the wall seems instead to be made up of unusually small stone, with the exception of the one large boulder that was visible from the surface before excavating the trench. In all, a very busy day (and exceedingly hot).