An exciting discovery

August 2 - Thursday

We had an exciting discovery in our ballroom today.  The room has been excavated to about 90 to 95% and we are down to the floor level.  We still have some uncertainty about what is the real floor level and there may actually be two levels, one before and one built right after an earthquake.  I included a photo of one of the side balks on July 31 because it clearly shows the strata by which the archaeologists can read what happened to the house.  Our field supervisor Stephanie took another careful look at that balk today and she noticed about 10 pieces of pottery low down in the wall all spread out in one layer and pressed together.  They seemed to be all related to one object.  There was ash mixed in with the pottery and as she carefully probed the ash she found what was a large collection of kernels of grain, either wheat or barley.  The grains were intact and easily identifiable as kernels, but they had been blackened by the fire.

Our archaeologist came and consulted, and it was quite clear what had happened.  The pieces of pottery were what remained of a large storage jar, a pithoi, and this had been used as storage for grain.  It probably had been on the upper level and had fallen to the floor below when the roof collapsed in the fire.  Then the mud brick upper walls had tumbled down and covered everything, but in the process preserving it for us to find.  The discovery was exciting because the grains are sufficiently preserved that they can be analyzed and subjected to radioactive carbon dating.  Carbon dating is quite accurate but gives a slight range of about plus or minus 60 years.  This window can be substantially narrowed statistically by taking and testing multiple samples which of course we did.  So far the house has been dated by analyzing the large number of objects found in the house, especially pottery.  The carbon dating will allow the archeologists to confirm their estimates and give a more precise date about the occupation and destruction of the house.

The photographs below are close-ups of the photo of the balk that I have shown in the report on August 31. 

Multiple layers of pottery can be seen from the left side of the photo right over to the right.  The dark layer of ash from the charred kernels can be clearly seen

The hand is pointing to the top layer of broken pottery

A close-up of the ash