Excavation notebook 1Jean-François Salles

3.This basement was reached by a double staircase per room: the flights are supported at the centre by a large, built, rectangular massif, and on the sides, by the refent pillars. The central massif measures about 2 m in width (façade visible in the corridor) and about 6.50 m long; if these assumptions are correct (to be confirmed during the next season by excavating J9/3-J8/2), the stair flights on each side of the massif would have 17 steps in a single flight. The height of the retaining massifs must have been that of the corridor (about 2.20 m) and their upper part must have supported the roof of the basement/ floor of the ground floor. The steps are made of marmaro slabs, height about 0.15/0.20 m. It is not certain that the interior of the massifs was entirely built. Blocks sloping steeply towards the north remain unexplained.

1.A very homogeneous fill, different from all the other fills (crushed yellowish sandstone) fills the "basins" and the corridor, up to height of the second or third stair step. Origin? Explanation?

2.In a second phase, the basement of the building is completely filled, and becomes an enormous solid massif. The filling works begin around the altitude 3.60/3.70 m: cf. marmaro slabs bordering the pillars, cf. levelling of the retaining massifs of the stairs down to about this altitude (these massifs are destroyed at the time of the filling process), cf. base of the brick walls (489) or the stone packings (450). These brick walls, incomplete, and these packings could constitute a kind of partitioning of the fill ("caissons"); above the levelled retaining massifs of the stairs, large massifs of very compact brick earth are piled. The filling of the basement contains material datable to the 1st quarter of the 4th c. BC.

3.The interior floor of the building of this second phase is (poorly) preserved towards the altitude 5.50 m (K8/2). The walls in elevation (480) no longer respect the plan in foundation: it became unnecessary to respect the solid bases that constitute the refent pillars, since the whole basement is full, and that the new elevations can be founded anywhere.