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Code
LK08.25
Season
2008
Narrative

It was an unbearably hot day today and so all work moved at a snail's pace. Roman was visiting today, and collected several soil samples for macrobotanical and paleopalynological analysis from loci 13, 14, 15, and 16. We spent the first part of the day working in locus 13, where we exposed the flagstone floor in all but the west corner. In the west corner, where the matrix is mostly clay, there are several rocks that appear to be fallen. Need to continue troweling around here, before deciding whether to remove. Perhaps the flagstone floor continues all the way to the southwest edge of the trench. Today we also started another locus just parallel to locus 13, locus 15, which is basically the same matrix: a rocky medium brown silt. The flalgstone floor can be traced across half of this locus. Oddly, where the flagstone floor stops it is met with a medium brown silt -- not a clay packed floor. I'm wondering whether the stone floor is a later construction, contemporary with the door closures, although even if so, we'd still expect to see some sort of prepared or packed surface alongside it. Will eventually excavate deeper in the area next to the stone floor to see if a clay floor is to be found further down. A new locus was also created in the narrow strip (or channel) between the interior line of stones and the northwest wall. Roman troweled in this area for macrobot sampling, and it is apparant that it is a medium to light brown clayish silt in most areas. The northwest wall seems to continue down, thought not yet clear how far.