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129.
sherds were introduced into rooms IX and X (737 on Pl. XLI). It may be noted that this fill with the [handwritten: Room III] early sherds extended through the area where the eastern partition wall was built to overlap floor V of room XIII (741 on Pl. XL, 2).
The above explanation, which is based on stratigraphical observations, has however one weak point: why should the extension of floor V in room XIII into the area of the later rooms IX and X have been destroyed? Is it possible that floor V of room XIII never extended into the space south of the pillar? In that case the rubble surface referred to as floor IV in the space south of the pillar, which is at level 12.85 m. and therefore 15 cms. lower than floor V of room XIII, might have been the original floor of that area. After the conflagration and subsequent clearance but before the rearrangements took place the fill with the early sherds was introduced to the area to raise its level to that of floor V in room XIII. Finally it was on this fill that the individual floors in rooms IX and X were made. This second alternative /explanation
65 figures hard to readstruck struck outadded written in above” jug ditto, and what it repeatsword reading not certain