Exposing a Bathhouse

My assignment, at least for the first part of this dig, is on a section of room in a Roman bath house.  Roman bath houses are fascinating to me, both because of their creative engineering (plumbing and heating) and because of the cultural centrality during the Roman Empire - this was a key social gathering place and every Roman polis (city) had to have one or more.  So I was delighted to discover that this was where I would be working.  And the particular section I am working in (with two others) is clearly defined by two walls, the tops of which had been exposed in the previous season.  Essentially, we are exposing a room, from top to bottom.  When we arrived, the top portion of an arched doorway was just beginning to show.  There were also two large blocks sticking out of the ground, a foreshadowing of what was to come. The city was destroyed by a major earthquake in 749 AD, which caused massive destruction.  These blocks, and many we found beneath, were all from construction above that toppled into this room.  Much of our digging was spent extracting these large blocks and tossing them aside.  

The "Before" picture.  Our site as we found it, before we began to dig.  Notice two large blocks sticking out from surface.  These blocks fell in from construction above during an earthquake.

Second "Before" picture.  This The opposite wall of our section.  Notice the fill in the opening, another doorway that will be exposed.

After the first day, we had leveled the surface and begun to slowly work our way down.  Mostly, we were learning technique of how to break up the ground, how best to extract the stones, where to dispose of the dirt and stone, and what kinds of things we were looking for.  Pottery was evident on this level, but not very helpful.  On the surface layers after destruction, there is usually a jumble of late pottery that is in terrible shape because it has not been protected well.  It's mostly junk pottery, but we are still looking to lips and handles, because these are most useful in dating the pottery.

End of day one.  Those two large stones removed, the surface of our area mostly leveled, a little more of the arch showing

The next two days, significant progress was made.  We started to work more smoothly and were able to get much deeper into the room.  It is still full of destruction and most of the finds are broken pottery pieces that are indistinct.  The best finds will be closer to the floor level, so we keep pulling out dirt and making our way down.  Large stones continue to be exposed and extracted.  The arch and doorway are opening up significantly.  Slolwy a room that has been hidden for over a thousand years is being exposed.

Two large stones that need to be pulled out.

Progress at end of day three.  Large stone in the archway is one we are leaving because the keystone in the arch is askew from the earthquake and we don't want to destabilize the arch.

The opposite doorway starting to open up.

So that is where we are at.  Continuing to dig and hoping that in the next couple days we will get close to floor level.  We have found a handful of decent pottery pieces that were worth keeping.  Below are some of the things I found, mostly pot handles