Day 5

We continued excavating today but also starting recording the first phases of our trenches. I got the students started on some hand drawn plans of the stonework in the first trenches we excavated while I caught up on some paperwork. We were in the process of getting a planning frame constructed for the dig by a window maker in Jericho and so had  to draw using a base line technique. The students quickly got the  hang of it and although were a little slow to start, quickly planned some of the collapsed vault we found in Trench 1.

Meanwhile, Mahmoud had done some further research on our day off about mills in the surrounding area and thought perhaps that the mill wheel would be on the outside of the building. While the four trenches we had already started had looked at the structure itself and the area to the south, we still needed to look to the north, beyond the part of the structure that is still sanding. We got Lesley and her survey team to extend our site grid and lay out two grids in this area that we will excavate at a later date.

Work continued excavating in trenches 3 and 4, exposing the back line of the wall of structure, albeit disturbed by modern activity. Work progresses at a steady rate and the students area getting used to this type of excavation. We now have a large amount of recording to catch up on, but hopefully we will get onto the second phase of excavation soon.