As we explored the area in locus 39 today, there were no visible signs of a doorway around the alignments of stones we were examining. We stopped digging the locus. There is no hint of a doorway that I can perceive either looking at the top of the wall or the side.
Loci 36 and 40 were closed today, so (the feature in 29 excepted) the new locus 41 will be the main task we have to accomplish tomorrow. It is a large area, but if we run two wheelbarrows and have two screeners, as we did today, it should be manageable. Neither locus 36 nor 40 was particularly rich in materials, though some did emerge even at the lowest elevations. The matrix in the NE side of the trench (loci 37 and 40) has changed from a dark brown aerated silt to a reddish clay. At first I thought the clay meant that we were hitting the sterile bedrock matrix, but it is very soft, which is contrary to what I have been led to expect. There are of course only a few days left in this season, so once locus 41 is complete I think there will only be time for a probe to find the bedrock layer. We'll probably also want to dig in the feature of locus 29, as well, and this will take still longer to complete.
I took one worker and dug a little bit in locus 38 today. We will not be digging much there; my only goal it to level the area out with the elevations we reached in 33 and 34. Once this is complete that should be the end of our efforts in the rear (SE) 5.67m of the trench for this season.
I continue to be surprised by how tall the walls are. We have so far exposed about 2m of the NW wall, and not much less of the SW. They are much deeper than the level of the flagstone floor, and than the features in loci 16 and 29. I am not sure whether those who constructed the room would have wanted to anchor the walls so deeply in the floor, or whether this perhaps suggests multiple occupations.