Considerable interest architecturally

These fallen flooring have been of appreciable curiosity architecturally; however additionally they serve for instance the significance in an excavation of exploiting the smallest minor particulars for the sake of scientific info. The fabric of which the ground protecting was composed, needed to be collected with as little disturbance as attainable in giant polythene baggage. It was later despatched for examination to Dr. Hans Helbaek of Copenhagen, who’s at current one of the crucial distinguished specialists within the antiquity of home crops.1 Dr. Helbaek’s first response to the looks of those specimens confirmed a lot curiosity and enthusiasm that his personal phrases, in a letter to the excavator, are maybe value quoting.

“My response” he says, “to your straw bedding is one in all amazement and delight. By no means in my lengthy profession have I seen something so properly preserved after millennia of concealment, excavation and lengthy transport. For the primary time I now have genuine samples of the cereals which grew 3000 years in the past, full with spikes, awns and the remainder of the plant. I spent yesterday and half of final evening recovering as a lot as attainable out of the baggage instantly, earlier than sifting. On this manner I obtained this distinctive, utterly untouched materials carbonised samples that are usable for direct comparability, with none technical formulation calculating carbonisation shrinkage, for comparability .with the cultivated crops.”

Floor through the yr

Dr. Helbaek went on to say “My idea of the bedding is as follows. A thick layer of straw from cultivated cereals with a wholesome stem, was laid down from time to time, in the midst of time being trodden totally flat and possibly splintered on the floor through the yr. Annually the highest layer was swept out and a canopy of recent straw was added on this case fetched from the slopes above the location the place the wild einkorm abounded.

The hearth occurred not too lengthy after this, as seems from the truth that the recent straw was nonetheless unfastened when it ignited and obtained sometimes carbonised. By comparability the decrease layers of bedding have been so flat and wanting oxygen as to have survived the hearth in a ‘peaty’ state, untouched by the flames.” He then concludes from the seasonal situation of the ears most not too long ago laid, that they have been reaped in early Could, and is thus in a position to repair the time of yr when the hearth passed off in early summer time. This in fact corroborates our personal idea of the town’s destruction, because the standard campaigning season of the Hittite armies was within the spring.