Amorphous amassment

Patrizia Camatta – August 2010

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Amorphous amassment

The elements that define a feature as amorphous amassment is the random alignment of inclusions. The collapse of a building, the dump of material in a pit are examples of this category. More than 10% of the features excavated in J6 belong to this category.

Dump

A dump is an intentionally discard of debris. In J6 two dumps were recorded.

dump 1 is the first feature in J6 that is related to human activity, the matrix and components within the layers change drastically. Within the features included in dump 1 we observed the masive presence of pebbles, animal bones, large stones and pottery sherds. The dump was found in all the southern portion of J6 (k65, k74, k75, k84, k85, k86, k87), under accumulation 1.

A second dump is represented by dump 2.
It is characterized by a soft red soil with ash lenses and a large presence of pottery, clay lumps with seal impressions, tannur pieces, objects, bones, and kilin waste. This dump was found directly under pit f192 and covered wall f227 and glacis f300 (see also section w206).

Fills

Four pits were excavated in J6. In this section I describe the fills. For the pit cut see section pit cut

, shell q389.10

feature	description	special objects	image
f87	Fill of a small round pit f92 cutting the brickfall. The pit was filled with a soft and fine brown reddish soil with pottery sherds.	-
f142	Fill of pit f122. The soil was soft, grey and ashy with several almost horizontal layers. It contained a large quantity of sherds, some complete vessels and animal bones	Small jar i11, seal impression q231.2, sealing i12.
f192	The large pit f199 was filled with different layers of reddish brown, brown and gray soil. The soil was soft and sligtly wet and ashy. The soil contained a proper amount of carbon, animal bones, a broken tannur f220, a large amount of pottery, roofing material, bricks, kilin waste, lithic and clay artefacts. Pit f282 removed the northern portion of the fill.	animal figurine q304.7, bead q333.1
f282	The fill of cut f283 is similar to fill f192. It consists of a brown wet soil with some roofing material, tannur pieces and some pottery sherds.	-

Collapse

A collapse of one or more buildings comes from east of J6 and covers almost all the unit and the lower portion of J2. The boundaries of the brickfall are sharp and defined, especially the bottom of it, which is bonded by glacis 1. The glacis slopes toward south-west and while to the west there is an open free space (the plaza), the brickfall spread to the west and was not blocked. The matrix of the brickfall is well defined: the lower portion brickfall 2 is about 1,5m thick, consists mainly of complete to broken mud bricks, while the topmost portion brickfall 1 is about 50cm thick and consists of melted mud bricks, due to its longer exposure to wind and water. See especially section w300.