.bk A9
.fl L710jlw.j
.fd daily journal for L710
.ei jlw
.ed L710
.rd L710
.ri jlw

-wk 6 picks and 17 in support reported for work

-wk after breakfast, excused Ghassan Hussein, who was nauseous and dizzy and Muhammud Mahmud, who had a family emergency at home.

-eq this morning, we were short of equipment.  Neither buckets nor wheelbarrows were issued.  Forty five minutes later, after jlw returned to the house to see Diadin, we received 3 wheelbarrows and 17 buckets, about half the number that are needed to move dirt efficiently.

f 276
df a
ds noticed that the accumulation on the west side of k23 was soft, although the same color as the harder material on the east side.  Also noticed that brickwork was appearing in the NW corner.

f 286
df a
ds began to discover lots of plastic sheeting in many parts of the locus at deeper levels than we had encountered previously.  It is unlikely that the pottery collected today in q765 is anything but a mixture of many levels and not suitable for dating.

-sg reviewed with gb the general plans for excavation in A9 for the balance of MZ14. First, we must complete the frame of A7 to A9 to A11. We will stop excavating in k23 and k24 when we encounter architecture in either one. Next, we will extend k16 and k26 only as far east as the east excavation limit of A11, about half the normal locus.  We will continue to trace the brick platform, f290, north and west of the old excavation lines for the 1990 A3 excavations.

k 24
dy continued to excavate large quantities of accumulation, f287, with modest amounts of sherds. Very similar to conditions in upper levels of k14 to the south.

k 31
dy traced a horizontal brick surface extending on the west side of the locus from the south edge through the north baulk.  It is clearly a part of the platform, a25, which now extends 10 meters N-S and over 4 meters E-W.  Encountered an E-W course of baked bricks, f289, as well as more yellow plastic tags with the numbers "f16", "f19", "f21", "f32", "f38", and "f49". gb recalled that there was a large multi-chambered tomb excavated in A3 in 1990. A search of the records at home revealed some A3 documentation of that excavation.  We will photograph it on L711, then cover it as we are only trying to trace major architectural features this season.

f 287
df a
ds accumulation under topsoil, f275 in k24.

f 288
df bk-is
ds a line of badly deteriorated brickwork appearing in the west half of the N baulk of k23 and running to the south for about 1.5 meters.  It gives the initial impression of being a wall-top.

f 289
df bk-is
ds a single course of baked bricks running E-W and joining bricks, f281, in the NE corner of k31 to form a tomb, a32, that is documented to some extent in the MZ6 excavations of A3 conducted in 1980.

f 290
df pv
ds brick pavement just under the surface on the far west side of k31 in the new grid orientation.  Undoubtedly a part of platform a25, that now extends from the southern part of k21, north to the north edge of the north boundary of k31, a distance of 10 meters.  It is a least 4 meters wide.