For more excitement Sarah worked with Violaine to extract soil from the storage jar in her square. The vessel had been set into the ground and may have contained organic material. Therefore Sarah will do a flotation of the soils so that the lighter weight seeds, charred organics, etc. will float up. Then she will skim them to be saved for sampling.

Dina's square has a large stone door socle or lintel in it. The hole for turning the door leaf is visible in the photograph. She and Betsy are discussing what she should do next as the excavation continues, and they are considering the depth of the square in relation to the levels dug so far. The decision was made to start dividing the pottery baskets between north and south just to clarify that the same date of pottery is being found throughout the trench.

Katie's square is somewhat typical of the stratigraphy back here. In the baulk you can see very light soil interspersed with very dark. Large areas of light bricky material is also highly visible on the floor. The lighter material in the profile is the result of late Third Intermediate Period and early Late Period reuse of the temple grain processing region. The round granary buildings of the New Kingdom were apparently razed to their floors and then used as foundation for work surfaces. Garbage piles of ceramics left by the later reuses resulted, and in some cases pits were dug simply to discard piles of broken sherds. Otherwise the work was apparently done on the hard packed mud surfaces.

Katie beams with her fragmentary inscribed stela (?). The object appears to show the rear lower portion of a kneeling man who wore a thick pleated belt. A couple of hierlglyphs can be seen to the left of this and may have named a figure. Unfortunately the only readable glyphs are an "n" and a "t" incised above the seated male determinative. Not a great deal to go on I fear. However, this is surely no earlier than Ramesside by its type and style, so it gives us an earliest date for the material in this level. Everything helps, but did it come from the pit? In that case it might have been amidst later garbage that was dug through and discarded in a deeper - i.e., normally earlier - stratum. Her notebook will tell us all (we trust).

To return to Part 1 of today images, click here.