August 6, 2000
The purpose of this small trench (2 m x 2 m) is to see the stratigraphic information of this area.
this trench is located just west of trench 1 in area D. Basically I am excavating the NE corner of the
trench. We will excavate every 25 cm and call it a level. The main aim is to see what is below, so I will
try not to take much time on this. But, I will still pay my attention not to blow off some walls!
Level 1
Since the slope is steep, I decided to create an arbitrary leveled surface and call it
a level 1. I did not excavte much in East side, since West side was about 1 m higher. We found many
broken pot-sherds, and lithics. This level is just a disturbance zone, washed from the slope above.
Level 2
I suppose to excavte 25 cm, but luckly? I found a possible surface. I decided to
stop excavting further and call it a level 2. (excavted about 10 cm feom the end of level 1). Befire
reaching the surface, I found concentration of large rocks (about 5 - 10 cm in diameter, mostly round),
randomly placed. Right below that rabble, we found a surface. The surface is very loose, even brushing
makes things dirty! We tried to clean the surface, but all we did was to blow more soil up into the air
and around. The surface contained small pebbells and flat-lying sherds. The soil was fine-sand and gray
to white in color. On the surface, we found a large piece of what it seems to be a leg of a large pot. I
took it up as a small find. the pot-sherds seems to be from a Hellenistic period. We will excavte 25 cm
from this level tomorrow, if it is possible, I want to finish 2 or 3 levels a day.
Aug 7, 2000
Level 3
we bashed the surface of level 2. Found few large rocks and just excessive
amounts of pot-sherds. We found a possible mud-brick wall against the west balk, but the line was not
clear. In Southwest corner, the compacted mud was lined against soft sandy soil, but in north, the line
became invisible. I decided to bash through. I kind of hesitated, but since this is not a regular trench, it
is better to go deeper. It turned out to be a wall laying below that possible mud-brick, which is in level 4
Level 4
We found stone lined wall. The stones were all layed flat. It was approximately
15-20 cm in length, for each stone. we took a photo and I wrote a plan for the wall (rough sketch).
Found more and more pottery, and several large rocks. These rocks could be from a collapse layer. As
in the case of trench 1 I found several grind-stone and other worked stone. Since there is a photo record,
I will dig this wall, but keep it for a level or two to see if the wall continues down further.
Aug 8, 2000
Level 5
Today, we only completed one level.... Tomorrow, I am planning to excavate as
much as we could. This morning, I decided to keep the wall at the West corner and dig around it to see
if the wall extends downward and show any surface. As soon as we start excavating, we found a surface
with pebbles and flat-lying sherds. It was a definate surface as in the case with the level 2. we exposed
rest of the surface and seems to show several different types of cultural surface. We took a plannable
photo-shot and I draw a quick sketch of the plan, but I will try to explain here. If you stand on the South
balk and look towards North, this is what you will see: From West(Left), there is a wall (from level 4).
This wall was made from lining the flat-stone, about 15 - 20 cm long. About 5 or 6 rocks are placed in
line, running N-S, slightly tilted to East. Next, there are some rocks, similar to the wall, are placed
below the wall. About3 or 4 rocks on south side. Actually, this is hard to explain. Basically, There
seems to be a two lines of large rocks running N-S, and in between those lining of rocks, the surface is
covered with small stones of about less than 5 cm in diameter. This surface is tightly layed with rocks.
Phill told we that it was similar to the steps at Hasan Kayf. it certainly does. Or, it could be a passway.
Just north of these tight layed rocks layer is a pebbled surface. East half is somewhat covered with hard
compacted soil that we seeing all over the site. I am not sure the wall from the previous level has any
connection to this surface. After taking photos and draw a plan, I decided to take away the wall from
Level 4. KT 3026 and KT 3027 came out from below the wall. We will dig down tomorrow, destroy
this beautiful surface. The mission is to reache the Uruk surface! It's kind of strange to see nothing on
my 4 m x 4 m trench, but so far we had two definate surfaces on 2 m x 2 m. Archaeology rely on
chance.
Aug 9, 2000
Level 6
Because I only excavated one level yesterday, I really wanted to dig 2 leveles
today; and I did! We removed the larger pebbles between the large linin of rocks, and we found a
pebbled later right below them. I am not sure that all the small pebbled layer were covered by larger
pebbles, or only half of the small pebbles were covered by large pebbles. After removing some large
rocks that were lined, we found more rocks, in two rows. Both, East and west lining of rocks had two
rows below one row of rocks. In section (that is E-W section) you will probably see rocks placed in
triangle, two rocks at the bottom and one rocks at the top. You will see two of the triangle, East and
west, and in between them, the small pebbles are layed, up to on third the triangle, and larger pebbles (5
cm in diameter) above this. We dug about 5 cm or so, and find these two lining of rocks. I removed the
first layer. Since this was the same structure, I thought about not calling it a level, but I closed level 6 at
this point (where I found the two two-rows of lining rocks). We took a photo, I draw a brief sketch of it,
and we dug deeper! Probably Level #5 and Level #6 could go together.
About KT 3029, this strange brick was sticking out from the balk at the SE corner. At one point
this brick became unstable and fell down to the trench. This brick was concave, I do not know which
level that it came from, and it is too close to the surface and not worth noting the elevation (I think) but
it is worth saving.
Level 7
We took the pebble and rock surface (or pathway/ steps?); excavated fair amount
of soil, and here comes another surface. This surface looks similar to that of Level# 2. There are many
flat laying sherds, some rocks and pebbles. The soil is loose and sandy, somewhat ashy? It seems this
level is still in the Hellenistic phase. I am not sure why there is so many surface in this trench!
Aug 10, 2000
Level 8
I am writing this journal on the 11th day of August, because we went to Mardin
for a weekend-trip. So, my memory is one day old, and I am little bit tired, but I think it is better than
writing the journal tomorrow. We begin scraping off the surface that we found yesterday, hoping not to
find new surface of the Hellenistic age. However, there were another surface right below the surface
above. This surface is only about 3 cm below, and this indicate that this area was heavily occupied for
relatively long period of time. Some readings from the elevation seems little strange (elevation of the
lower level are higher than the level above), becaue we dug only 1 cm or so, and took elevation from
different point. Also, the surface was far from being flat. On this surface, the possible wall appeared on
the East side of the trench. This wall? looks similar to that from the previous levels. It is allinged on
same diretion, same sizes of rocks, similar way of lining (2 line), and almost exactly the same location.
All of these levels seems to be related, but level #7 did not have the rocks (wall or a path-way) It was
covered with compacted mud, and had only few pottery. The line of compacted mud was visible at this
level (7). Probably I was lucky (or unlucky) enough to find the level where there were no rocks. Now, I
found the first row of rocks, whihch was single row, and directly below was a two lined wall. It had a
little space after that (Level 7), covered with compacted mud, and another 2 rows of rocks were layed
below that. West side of this wall was covered with occupational debries, and multiple layer of surfaces
were uncovered. At this point we decided to make this sounding an official trench. Now, I have to be
more careful about the excavation. I will give a locus number and this small trench will be dealt as
regular trench.
Since we finding multiple layer of surfaces, I assigned this surface as Locus 3000, and the
possible wall as 3001. I wil excavate the inside of the wall (West-side) first to see if this wall continues
further down or not. We start excavating the Locus 3000, but we did not excavate that much today.
Wait for the result from tomorrow.
Aug 12, 2000
Locus 3000 Excavated few cm to expose another surface. Still, it is the same surface.
Someone excavated NE corner little deeper than the other area. Looking at that pit, it seems that there
are still more surfaces to come below. We made the surface flat, and took a photo, and closed the Locus
3000. I wonder why there are this many surfaces on top of each other. Some pot-sherds looked
somewhat different than before. Most of the pot-sherds were well fired and the cut had a uniform color
in general. However, I found some sherds with black color in fresh break. Well, we must wait for the
pottery rading to be sure.
Locus 3002 This is the Locus below 3000, which is another surface. there is another surface
below, with many sherds. There were some round rocks below the surface of 3000. There could be
some space of time between these levels, but I am not sure at this moment. Since we (area D) lost two
best workers, today was a slow day. Hope we can get better workers tomorrrow. A guy that worked in
this trench was lazy and did not do much. Maybe I should be pushing them harder.
Aug 13, 2000
Locus 3002 We did not work in D3 this morning since I sent them to work on D1. But after a
while, I sent one workman back to scrape the surface a little bit and brushed the surface. We found
another surface (as usual), and closed this Locus. Took a photo and continue to push down on the next
level (Locus 3003). I should clean Locus 3001 (Wall), and try to see the relationship between the wall
and the surface. There could be another layer of rocks, so we must look careful. We also strightened the
balk. I gave KT 3058 (pottery), and KT 3060 (lithic). There were many body-sherds, and it was out of
context. I thought about keeping them all, but I tried to keep all the diag and large sherds, but tossed the
body sherds away.
Locus 3003 The surface of this Locus seemed different than the surfaces above. This surface
had less pebbles, but some in West side of the surface. There seems to be more sherd than other
surfaces, but I am not definate on this point. The soil was more compacted, and more silt like than sand.
Also, the soil was somewhat brownish. I am not sure, but this could mean that there were time laps
between the previous surface and the surface below. Finish excavating this level.
TRENCH SUMMARY OF AREA D TRENCH 3
The area D is located on the east side of the tell below a steep slope. We have chosen this area
since there was a small flat area like a hump on a hillside. Our aim was to find an earlier occupational
levels. The trench 3 was originally started out as a sournding. The purpose was to see the stratigraphoc
information of this area; we decided to excavate 2 m x 2m trench and 25 cm arbitrary levels, unless we
find some definate cultural level. However, we did not achieve the original goal but we found more
than what we expected. In this small trench, we found multiple layers of surfaces, all dates to Hellenistic
in age. Most surfaces were concealed and not disturbed and perfectly preserved Hellenistic rock
constructed wall and possible pathway. We had to abandon the original plan as a sournding and convert
into a regular trench. For next year, we may expend this into a full trench and see the Hellenistic
architecture and surfaces.
Level 1 (87.89 - 87.09) Because of a steep slope, the differenes in the elevation of the biginning
surfaces from west to east were about 80 cm. I decided to level this trench into a flat surface and try to
excavate from there on.
Level 2 (87.09 - 87.01) After making a flat surface, we began excavting. Only few cm below,
we found a surface, which contained small pebbles and flat sherds. Several large rocks of about 10 cm
were above the surface.
Level 3 (87.01 - 86.88) The surface was very sandy, but compacted (by pressure?) Found many
pot-sherds below the surface. Found a possible mud-bricks (or just a hard-compcted latyer of mud) near
the west wall, oriented towards Northeast. It was probably not a mud-brick since I could not find ant
definate line.
Level 4 (86.88 - 86.71) Below the mud-brick, I found a line of rocks. Seems to be a foundation
for the mud-brick wall, or people put compcted mud above the rocks. Found some large rocks within
this levels, probably from collapse. Also, many worked stone, such as grind-stones were found.
Level 5 (86.71 - 86.67) Decided to leave the rocks for now and excavte the east side of the wall.
Few cm below, there was another line of stones at the East side of the trench, parralleling to the one in
West. Inbetween theses lines of rocks, there was a pebbled/small rock surface. There were not many
flat sherds, and seemed like a path. Large pebbles, the size of approximately 5 cm were placed.
Level 6 (86.67 - 86.52) I removed the line of rocks and found two lines of rocks on each side.
Between them was another surface. The surface is consisted of flat-sherds, pebbles, and sandy soil.
Level 7 (86.52 - 86.37) Another surface which is very simiar to that of level above. It seems that
all these layers of surfaces were occupied relatively in close time range and heavily occupied. I removed
the wall and found another lines of rocks just below it. It seems that these rocks (wall) were continuous.
However, the wall at the West side disappered. The rocks at the west side were placed like a triangle.
But on the east side, there is one more line below the triangle. This wall has not been excavated yet.
Level 8 (86.37 - 86.35) This is another surface level. At this point, we decided to excavate this
trench as same as regular trench. So, the next level wil be Locus 3000 (surface) and the Locus 3001
(wall).
Locus 3000 The surface apperars exacly as same surface as other levels. Small pebbles of
about 5 mm to 1 cm, and some larger rocks are present. Many flat laying sherds are everywhere in this
trench.
Locus 3001 This Locus is the two line of rocks on the East side of the trench. I did not
excavte this Locus. Hopefully excavte next season.
Locus 3002 This is another surface, with grey-white colored soil, fine sand with pebbles. The
pottery from this level is all good Hellenistic context.
Locus 3003 This Locus is another surface. However, this seems to be slightly different surace
than before. Soil were more compacted and silt like. Also, soil seems to be more brownish in color and
more fine grain(silt) than fine sand. could represent different ocuupational time, but at this point, it is
hard to define any time periods to these surfaces other than saying it is in Hellenistic age.