.bk J04
.fl QX05sC.j
.fd on stone found on J02 starircase f130
.ei sC
.ed QX05

.rd QX05
.ri sC

-dy Last week, during the stratigraphy meeting in the field, gB suggested us to clean the portion of the w128 where it abuts the monumental staircase in J2, in order to understand the real realionship between them, i.e. whether w128 is sitting on top of the monumental staircase (as it seems) or is bounded with, etc. In fact, until today, the general understanding of w128 was that: w128 is sitting on the monumental staircase, and thus, that it is a later costruction (to be approximately phased in phase 2-4/5). The last two rows of the stone w128, clearly different in shape and modality of construction, have been always interpreted as a second/later phase, and being part of the re-arrangement of the area where the apron is located occurred in Mittani time. This re-arrangement of the area is cleary visible in the different accuracy of the steps between the lower and upper part of the staircase, by the big stone with a flat surface resting on an accumulation on top of the "primary" apron. The area of contact between w128 and the monumental staircase in J02, was never really investigated up to-date, and therefore on QX03 we start cleaning this portion of J2. Close to the w128 there was also one stone, rolled here probably from the top of the wall or from the secondary Apron. This stone (q168) was abutting w128, disturbing the real perception of the relationship between this wall and the monumental staircase. We took a picture of the stone in place (v92, v92a, v92b), and then we removed the stone and start cleaning the accumlation below the stone, f167, which it is in contact with the monumental staircase. Once we removed f167 and all the dirt accumualted here in the last years we had a completely new picture of the contact between the two structures: w128 is not sitting on the monumental staircase but cleary bound with it. Thus w128 is contemporary to the monumental staircase and is therefore dated to phase 1. We have been always considered less probable the possibility of a bounding bewteen w128 and the monumental staircase because this would have meant that w128 was built in the same period of the revetement wall, and the presence of two wall at the same time was a bit puzzzling. We took several picture in order to document the bounding bewteen w128 and the monumental staircase (v93 and following).