Bamboula, Tombs (extracted from McFadden's notebooks)

BAMBOULA, TOMB 2 (cont.)

29 April(cont.)

Photos Bam 244-245 of Skeletons IV-V.

Removing the finds discover that the leg bone at the head of III is part of a complete set of legs, running under III. Call it IIIa.

Photo Bam 246 of IIIa.

2 May 1938Digging below skeletons III-V, find another skeleton, VI, in the east of the chamber. The skull associated with IV probably really belonged to VI, V belonging to IV. In this case there never was any skeleton V. VI lay on its side (?) with the legs crossed, 1.00 meter below the present surface of the land. There were no associated finds.

All the rest of the tomb is filled with stone and brick at this level.

Photos Bam 251-252 of skeleton VI.

Dig below VI and find the layer with stones and bricks in most of the tomb.

Photos Bam 253-254 of stoney strosis.

This must be fallen from built walls of the tomb. On the south side, where the rock is good, there are less stones. The most stones are to the S and E, where the rock is bad. The probability is that the south wall was not faced.

3 May 1938Remove the stoney fill, which rests in part on light brown earth which has silted under water, and in part on red-brown earth containing sherds. It is over the lowest burial remains in the tomb, so that the tomb was not originally faced with masonry (and maybe never).

The tomb was obviously badly disturbed before the stoney fill came in. In the northern half of the tomb we found only occasional sherds and a few broken bones, surely not in situ. The remains in the southern half of the tomb fall into two groups, a western and an eastern. Only the east group is in situ. It is a group of Base Ring Ware jugs, much broken and packed in hard mud. The west group consists of earth and pottery thrown into the corner prior to the stoney fill. There is considerable earth between the pottery fragments. Only one pot, no. 12, was more or less complete and perhaps in situ, by the door. Fragments of a human arm were found in the west group, not in situ.