Two phases to the ballroom

July 31 – Tuesday

Our attention turned again to the ballroom today.  Almost all of the fallen debris has now been removed but the archeologists have pointed out a vexing problem.  There appears to be two levels for the floor, about 12 inches apart, and they think that the house had two distinct phases.  I photographed the side balk and reproduce that here for you.  It clearly shows the distinct layers of material.  On top is the layer of boulders that formed part of the wall of the Iron Age 2 house that was built over the earlier Iron Age 1 house.  Below the stones is the obvious layer of mud brick that tumbled into the space and then below that, black ash.  On the right side of the photo the balk appears to show two distinct layers of ash.  Although it is not easy to visualize in the photo, the level of the floor on the left side of the photo is higher than that on the right, and you will notice a hole in the center of the floor in this area.  When this hole was explored it revealed a small cavity with another level below it.  The single layer of stones coming towards you at the bottom probably represents  a simple new installation after the earthquake.

The balk on one side of the ballroom

In other areas at Umayri there are clear signs pointing to several earthquakes in the past.  Some of the destruction at other 1200 BC locations appears to be the result of earthquake activity, and if that is the case then our Iron Age 1 House would have been affected and an earthquake could have caused the unusual situation in the ballroom.  Assuming that an earthquake damaged the house initially, it would have been quickly repaired to give a second floor level just above the first one.  The archeologists are therefore calling this a two-phase building, one before and one immediately after an earthquake.  So that has slowed up our clean up at the floor level in this room in our house. 

Besides the floor question our appreciation of the overall room space was impeded by two balks that traversed and divided the room.  We needed to take down those two balks to fully expose the room to provide an easily understood perspective.  As I have explained earlier the balks are laid out by the archeologists on the surface of the ground before they start the initial excavation, and are always aligned by the compass north-south and east-west.  As the excavation proceeds the walls of the buried buildings that become exposed almost never align with the balks, and as the excavation continues the balks are usually taken down to properly reveal the overall architecture of the buildings.   Over the last two days we had almost completely taken down one balk and I have a photo of this balk in the final stages of removal.  There is still some residual mud brick material at the far end, and the bottom ash layer still has to be removed.  You can easily notice the stone wall on the right disappearing into the balk.  It is part of the Iron Age 1 house structure.

The side balk almost completely taken down.

As we go about our work, digging and scraping away, our field supervisor, Stephanie, keeps a close eye on everything and frequently calls the senior archeologists over to consult and interpret what we are exposing.  It truly is a fascinating process.  For more background about the site and the project in general there is an informative web site that you might like to check.  Google – madabaplainsproject and click on Umayri.  There is a good bit of background information you can read.  At the Umayri page click on News, then Jordan update.  In the first line of Jordan update click on weekly reports to get an update on what is happening now in the 2012 season.  Doug Clark has asked some of us to write impressions of the dig and I forwarded him my description of the Balk Walk – he has said that he will include it in the next edition.