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.fd daily journal
.rd O726
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-sg from today until the end of the excavations (29th of July) we'll work also during the afternoon with all the complete staff trying to reach the goals that we fixed. In the morning we dotted the eroded stone which fall down in the staircase, Bp finished to relay the stones and the crane removed quite all the floating stones in k83.

k 3
dy scraping the surface we notice two different features which are at the same level. In the north-western corner we found a layer (f99, q267) with soft ashy soil and few sherds. I defined it a lens since it seems concentrated just in the north-western corner. In the eastern part of the area, instead, we found reddish soil (f101, q268) quite compact and with a large amount of sherds. This layer is below the layer that we dug yesterday (f97) with large amount of sherds and small pebbles and above the melting bricks which are visible in the east section (western side of the German trench). At a first sight it seems to me that the are many Khabur sherds, maybe we can ask mkB to analyze the pottery bag. Below this layer we found in all the area (now approximately 4m wide and 1m  length) a layer which contains melting bricks. This new feature (f106, q273, q282 and q285) is composed by melting bricks mixed with pottery. The colour of the soil is reddish, the same colour of the core of the bricks which, instead, are grey.

k 4
dy we started going down in the feature previous excavated (f81, q263) until when we noticed the presence of a floor. This floor (f102, q269) is made by compact soil mixed with pebbles and with a few amount of sherds. It's, more or less, in the northern half of the square and it's possible to see it in the northern baulk.  This pavement could belong to the Mittani period. We could flag the pottery and ask mkB to analyze it. Going down we reached a new layer (f105, q271 and q277) which is characterized by a very hard and compacted soil and extends itself  in all the unit. In the meantime we are going down removing the eastern baulk of k4 (or, more correctly the western side of the German trench) (f79, q276) and we noticed the presence of a different layer. This feature (f110, q286) it's characterized by the presence of ash.

k 14
dy we continued to go down with the previous feature (f76, q265) until we noticed two different situations. In the eastern part of the unit part of one of the German trenches (f104, q287) was clearly recognizable, while in the western part we noticed a mixture of softer (powder-like) soil and laminations (f109, q281 and q284).

k 13
dy we continued to go down (f95, q266) until we reached a new layer. This feature (f103) is characterized by a very compact soil with dark brown colour. It's clearly different from the layer above which was moved by the German during the excavations. It's probable that the top of f103 was used as walking plan. We collected the following q-lots (q266, q270 and q278).

k 84
dy we are going down in the northern part of the square, the baulk area and the southern part of k83 (f96, q264, q275, q275) and we remove the columns of soil below the stones in the northern part of k83 (f107, q279).

.rd O728
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-ns Today we decided to remove the eroded stones which were placed south to the wall that we noticed in k13. Below the stones we found the same kind of soil, very compact and graysh. We decided to select some q-lots (f103: q329, q332, q 335) in order to date the erosion of the stones.

.rd O729
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-ns today we showed to mkB the material coming from the last layer of k13: f125,q354 which at a first sight seems Mittanic (with a shard of conical cup). We think that f125, q354 and q359 could also be interesting as samples of Mittanic material. May be it could be interesting to look also at the material coming from k3. The last q-lots excavated in this unit are f112, q299  and q304. This layer, however, is brickfall so the material will be mixed.