We began this morning by setting out a new trench on the eastern side of the site. We had two possibilities: select one of the lower terraces in order to get a comparison with NT1 or open a sounding in the eastern settlement hoping to gauge whether it is LBA or later. We went with option one largely because it seemed the most pressing need but I still hope to place a sounding in the eastern settlement as well. The new trench is ET01 and is 3x5m in extent.
Trench C3: In area C, we have come down upon a layer of packed clay that sits atop a dark brown fill. I think the clay is our floor and the fill the foundation. The association between this floor and the lowest wall construction is entirely unclear since the floor appears to be about 20cm below the bottom of the wall. But we are cleaning the wall and profile under it to gain greater clarity. We are also scraping down the black fill layer which appears to be quite thick in places--up to 15cm in one balk. In the Northwest corner, the black fill may be even thicker as it seemes to continue down substantially. The fill has materials--particularly bone--in it, but densities are lower than in the locus just above the floor. We are now 3m down from top of trench to floor. In area A, what we have termed a pit bottomed out on a large flat stone--probably natural rock--that encompassed about 3/4 of the locus. The other 1/4 seems to have a granulated fill that may harbinge bedrock. But the profile of the pit appears quite strange. The packed clay that we first noticed ends after about 20cm and below that continues the medium brown wash soil that was familiar from inside the pit itself. Then again after 15cm of this, a new layer of clay with what appears to be an organic facing begins and continues for 10cm to the stone. Is this 2 pits superimposed? In order to try to get a better idea, we moved to the exterior of the pit and began taking out the loose ashy fill in the rerst of the trench. On the southern edge of the trench, we immediately exposed a stone basin, much like the one in WT2. But the packed clay surface visible atop the eastern wall of the pit extends above this basin, indeed runs across the top of it. On the west side of the pit, I tried to excavate the other side of the packed clay construction. It appears to be quite thick but in one portion does not seem to run into the wall. As I excavated, I found a second clay construction that seems to run into or under the west wall. This pit bottomed out on a layer with a red clay construction (brick?), a floor covered with a matting, and a charred post-hole that suggests the west wall was faced with a wooden infrastructure. We cleaned and will continue this excavation tomorrow, hoipefully finishing in Area C.
Trench C5: Spent day picking through the rubble field in order to differentiate walls from fall in the extension. We are terming the whole trench C5 but will use new loci in the new area to differentiate.
Trench NT1: Workers very slow and unwilling today. Cleaning in Area C to try to define possible floor/possible architecture. In the southern end, it appears that we have bedrock on which perhaps a wall was constructed. In the northern end, a mottled layer of yellowish clay and blackened soil seems to extend in new areas. We are defining it and will then go through it as we are as yet above the floor level visible in area B. In Areas A/B--now joined with the complete removal of the balk--we are opening the floor area of the "courtyard" and screening the material. Nothing unique has come up in the screen though perhaps we are getting finer pieces of bone. We will bring this to floor level and then do a small sounding for bedrock. Finally we removed the southernmost 50cm of topsoil in order to open a complete upper plan of the wall for Hasmik to draw.