Who is this? Lucas is playing cards.

            Aaaaaaaaaand I’m back, with more exciting news from squares F7 and F8.  I just finished doing a top plan, which has become very complicated.  Not only do we have our original two squares but our plan now includes extensions to both.  It’s just tracing, but it has gotten more tedious.  No matter.  I may have found a wall today.  The general rule is something like “three stones make a wall,” and we have three stones.

            You can see them up against the balk on the right of the picture.  Next to them we also found a large flat flagstone kind of deal.  It's something, we just don't know what yet.  A project for tomorrow.  You can also appreciate how far down we’ve gone since the beginning. Pretty cool.  Sam’s marking where we started.

            Yesterday yielded a number of cool finds.  Unfortunately, I didn’t take any pictures of them.  First Ryan uncovered a chalice smashed upside down near the southern balk of F7.  That was neat because we hadn’t found a vessel in such good condition yet.  I don’t think it was smashed in situ, but it was fun nonetheless.

            Much more notably, and still without a photo, though I may grab one from the dig-house in the next couple of days, was a stamp seal.  These were either stone or clay, in our case stone, which were inscribed with a picture or name or something of that sort and then pressed into clay.  When we pulled it out it was dirty, but Bob somehow managed to see that it was an Ibex or some other horned animal with a man standing next to it raising his arms.  Keep in mind that this seal is about the size of a dime, maybe smaller.  I checked it out today when it was cleaned up and it looks awesome.  It has a hole through it where it was worn on a necklace and there’s a piece of silly-putty or something with the impression in it.

            We also found a ceramic stopper for a jar or something, but that was not nearly as awesome as the seal was.

            Today Phil and I started cleaning off a basin that was dug up years ago.

            They (the people on top) are starting to get things cleaned up for the final photos at the end and they wanted this basin to be nice and visible.  It was full of weeds and dust, but it didn’t take long to clear out.

            For most of the day we were just trying to keep going down.  I think we did an alright job.  Here’s F7 at the end of today:

            You can look back and compare this to earlier photos.  It’s now very hard to get in and out of the square easily.  The best find from today was a large grinding stone.

            This came out in fill as some sort of tumble, so it was probably reused as a wall stone.  This kind of secondary use is pretty common and we (that is, the entire site) have pulled up several grinding stones from walls.  In a separate area, but still nearby in F7, we found a pounding stone, or some sort of worked stone hand tool of undefined function.  It’s basically a smooth, round stone that was used either to hit things or grind things.  These are also very common and look a lot like rocks.  Tomorrow we’re just going to keep digging down and hopefully find more goodies and determine whether or not my wall in the north balk of F8 is a wall or not.

            Yesterday night I downloaded A Clash of Kings, the second book in A Song of Fire and Ice and I can say, “HOLY POOP” after just 150 pages.  HBO fans are in for a treat in the second season of Game of Thrones.  It’s pretty awesome.

            That’s all for now.  I hope everyone had a good Fourth and blew lots of things up.