The last week

Sunday entailed pizza and Tiramisu (which was delicious) and then it was on to the last week of dig.

The first few days were much of the sameness with the oh so dreaded wheelbarrowing, however Wednesday and Thursday were my favorite days on dig for the entire trip. My friend Nicole and I were given our own SU.

What this basically means that every wall, floor, special feature or dirt layer is given an SU number e.g. 5734. This numbered area is then measured and plotted in by the topography team, then we label a container with that number so that anything we find within that SU (usually animal bone, pottery fragments and occasionally metal or charcoal) gets put into labeled bags and placed in a container (like this one). 

Our SU was a very small area, a square patch of dirt between a floor where they thought a floor block had been robbed out,  and a strange number of bricks sticking out of a break in the wall, a simple robbery it was assumed. However once we started excavating it quickly became apparent that the bricks had been purposefully placed there and not long after we uncovered a brick arch. Underneath it were a couple of different soil layers and interestingly a thick layer of charcoal. This made us think that due to the close proximity to the newly discovered hearth a meter or so away that it may have been used in conjunction with it. The ideas of a drainage system, an oven and interestingly a kiln were all thrown around. 

I guess no one will know till next year with more time and analysis now!

If you look to the left behind Laura (the lady in blue) you can just see the beginning of our pit being uncovered.

Andrew giving a Trench tour of the progress made.

We then had a quick tour of the French teams excavation area which was very interesting. They have a team from the Louvre trying to uncover the road however instead they found later walls, some floors and best of all some burials actually in the walls. Interesting stuff!

And then quite suddenly, it was the last day.