Today the ground was so wet, and the dirt in WSDB is so clayey, that we never managed to screen in Locus 41 or 44. It probably would have dried out enough by the afternoon, but by then, we were only cleaning for final photos.
So today, we troweled carefully in Locus 41, and took some of the area down where it was higher, but I don\'t really think we found a \"floor\" per se. The ceramic hearth pieces (Locus 46) were rather higher than where we stopped troweling, and we just never seemed to find a hard, packed surface. Instead, by the time we closed the locus (and bagged and packed the hearth for another year), the soil was mottled with black lenses, and was a rich, almost reddish brown, with a considerable amount of clay. There were also a number of pieces of hard, white chalk rocks throughout the locus. The area will have to be reopened (and another locus created) when the entire room of WSDB is dug. For now, we removed all the pieces of ceramic vessels, but not the hearth, so that eventually we might see the relationship of the hearth to the whole room.
And in fact, the line of rocks that divides Loci 41 and 44 is puzzling and needs to be reopened. At its western extent, it is two courses high, and then seems to switch to two courses wide, but only one course high. On the eastern side, it looks like other Tsaghkahovit two-course-wide rock dividers, such as the one on the NE wall of WSS1. But on the western side, it looks very different, with longer rocks, and perhaps that reflects a later addition meant to close off the burial area?
We troweled and cleaned Locus 44 SE of the line of rocks (which is Locus 45) for final photos, and while it looked great, it also may not be a floor. Still, the hard, packed, clayey matrix is more in evidence on the NE side than to the west. It too will have to be reopened.
Locus 43 was also finished today, the dog-leg extension of the trench westward. We found the extent of the wall, though of course, not its final height.
We took multiple soil samples from Locus 41, one from Locus 45 (the dividing line of stones), and one from Locus 46 (the area of the hearth in Locus 41).
In all, I think that we reached the bottom course of stones on all of the walls in the trench. More work will need to be done to dig down and find the final deposits in the future.