Wednesday, February 09, 2011

Excavating a house at Amara West

British Museum (Tom Lyons)

With photographs. Exerpt:

As I’ve worked on other archaeological projects in the near east I have encountered buildings constructed in mud brick before. Many archaeological principles remain the same and now that the excavation is nearing a close I’m very familiar with the process of revealing buried architecture among collapsed buildings, and clay floor surfaces and recovering a variety of domestic objects such as large grinding stones, ovens and masses and masses of pottery.

My task is to supervise the excavation of a narrow house dating to about 1100 BC with local workmen removing the archaeological structures and deposits after I identify, draw and describe them. This task is complicated by the fact that several different phases of architecture still exist in the same space. Distinguishing them and reconstructing the original sequence of events is a crucial component of the work.

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