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.fd daily journal O629
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-wk I got six new guys today. Five of these went to the new locus k14 and one went to work in k4. Now I have altogether 16 men. Everybody is working well and listening to my wishes. Safwan in k5 is a bit of a handful since he wants to do everything. In other units everybody sticks to the tasks to which I assign them.

-eq We broke a trowel and we also had a problem with the wheel of a wheel barrow. In order to operate two units, k5 and k14, and the elevator in k100 we will need four wheel barrows; one for each unit and two for the elevator.

k 14
dy We opened this locus today. The western half of k14 is the German trench 20. The current bottom of that trench (including collapse) is approximately 1.5 m below the tell surface. Near the northern baulk of k14 we ran into a large stone near the surface. It seems to be there alone and has probably rolled to its current location from the temple terrace to the north. It is located much higher than we would expect for the apron we think extends into this unit from the north. We also found a tannur, f9, close to the middle of the southern baulk.
sg My initial idea was to go with the big pick until we reach the level of the German excavation and then continue down in the whole unit. I did not expect to run into any major features until reaching the possible apron. Now that we located the tannur f9 at the southern end of the locus, we will continue excavating around it with small picks looking for a  floor possibly associated with this installation. We will also excavate inside the tannur trying to find its bottom. The tannur will be cleaned and photographed. This will significantly slow down the excavation in this unit. For now we will leave the stone pedestalled.

k 5
dy We continued with f4 in this unit for most of the day. Compared with yesterday, however, the pebbles seem to have become larger. Half way through the day we located a large stone close to the middle of the northern baulk. We did not reach the bottom of it today. This stone seems to be there alone and probably has eroded down from the temple terrace to the north. It is definitely located much higher than we wound expect if it were an in situ part of the apron. Towards the end of the day I changed the feature in the whole locus into f8 although there was no change in the soil matrix. fAB suggested I do this in order to keep track of the pottery that comes from this unit better. Close to the southwestern corner of the unit we located a bird's nest with three dead birds in it. The nest seems to be quite big and thus has created significant disturbance to this area of the unit. The nest influences q15 and q19 excavated today and will continue to affect the first q-lot excavated in this unit tomorrow.
sg Tomorrow we will continue with the big pick since there does not seem to be anything going on in this unit. We will leave the stone pedestalled once we reach its bottom.

k 4
dy We continued with big picks in this unit. So far we have not located any stones. At the end of the day we got the elevator working and I moved men of this unit to operate the elevator.
sg We are still roughly 5 cm above the level where the stone was located in k5 today, but since the stone in k5 is probably isolated, I do not expect to find any large stones here any time soon. If the machine is working tomorrow, the men of this unit will operate the elevator in the morning and return to this unit after breakfast. We will continue with big picks the whole unit at a time.

k 100
dy Towards the end of the day we got the elevator working. We started removing the weather induced collapse roughly in the middle of the unit. 
sg Since the air in k100 is not very good, we might just operate the elevator in the morning and continue with the all three surface units in the afternoon. Every 20 min we will stop working and give the men below a break. During this time the men above will collect pottery sherds, bones, and possible artifacts from the shifter. Today we had two pottery bags open at the same time. One was below and one was up by the shifter. To make sure that these bags stay connected I have made them into a q-lot aggregate. This aggregate also includes q-items and bones. I did the same thing previously when the elevator was working and will continue to do so. The pottery bag up by the shifter fills in quicker than the one below. Starting tomorrow I will close the bags at the same time thus always forming an aggregate from two q-lots. These q-lots then come roughly from the same place in the collapse. 

f 6
df ts
ds This is the topsoil layer of k14. Similarly to f2 (in k5) and f3 (in k4) the bottom of the topsoil layer is defined by a dark organic band. f6 covers the whole unit. In terms of recording, I used this feature until we had the locus level. Thus in the northern half of the locus it is thicker than in the southern half and contains material below the dark organic band.

f 7
df ly
ds This is the layer below topsoil feature f6 in k14. The soil matrix is a mixture of harder and softer areas. The soft areas are probably caused by the presence of fresh and/or decomposing roots.
pr I changed the feature into this once we had made the unit level and were able to continue down. 

f 8
df ly
ds This feature covers the whole locus, k5: is artificially differentiated from f4 above it. The soil matrix is still characterized by alternating hard and soft patches. The feature also contains quite a few pebbles. 
pr The separation was made so that features do not come too large and thus making it more difficult to keep track of the pottery coming from this unit. 

f 9
df ta
ds Tannur near the middle of the southern baulk of k14. The complete circle of the tannur is preserved.

f 10
df fi
ds Fill inside tannur f9 in k14.