Pit A

Context Title: Pit A     
Context Name (Publication): Pit A     
Context Name (Excavation): Pit A     
Context Description: Beginning in season 7, Woolley excavated a series of pits within the Royal Cemetery. He had already cut this area down about 10 meters from the surface, so it was an ideal location to go deeper to investigate the earliest occupation of the site. The only map of the location of these pits that Woolley published is found in Ur Excavations volume 4 in 1955, but it is demonstrably unreliable. Combining information from the field notes, the UE4 plan, and the UE4 stratigraphic profile helps to get closer to the actual sizes and locations, but most of these cannot be taken as exact. Pit A was located relatively centrally in the overall Royal Cemetery Area, though its exact location is not known. A reference in the Antiquaries Journal for 1929 mentions a pit dug somewhat northwest of Pit B on the "other side of PG/1237" and this must be Pit A as no other pit would fit the description. This helps to narrow the location as does the fitting of lines from the combined stratigraphic profile published in UE4. Everything points to a location west-nortwest of PG/1237. The plan map published in 1955 shows Pit A substantially southwest of this, but it is not trustworthy. The stratigraphic profile places the width of the pit at 2 meters and it is probably safe to assume that it was square. It began at the same level as the floor of PG/1237 and went down at least another 5 meters, reaching 1.5 meters above sea level. No artifacts are recorded as having been collected from this pit.     

Files

Media: Pit A Export: JSON - XML - CSV

Media Media Title Title Label Author Omeka Label
Ur Excavations IV; The Early Periods Ur Excavations IV; The Early Periods 1955 Woolley, L. (none)
  • 1 Media

Share

Email | Edit

Context

Ur > Royal Cemetery | PG > Pit A

References

Woolley, L. . (1955) Ur Excavations IV; The Early Periods, Oxford: Oxford University Press.