 | Pit Y | In season 8, Woolley expanded the Royal Cemetery (area PG) to the southwest and northeast. After digging more of the southwestern extent, he decided to investigate deeper still in two pits larger than those he dug in season 7 but not as large as Pit F in the Temenos area. These two pits were initially Pits I and J in the sequence but confusion with lettering caused Woolley to begin at the end of the alphabet and rename these pits Y and Z.
Pit J was located in the far southwestern corner of the expanded Royal Cemetery of season 8 and was quickly renamed Pit Y. The published stratigraphic profile shows it to be 12 meters wide at the top but within 1 meter of depth it shifted to only 6.5 meters width. At the bottom, where it reached sea level, the pit had been further reduced to 5 meters width, and a smaller segment of 3 meters size was taken another meter down below sea level. This pit and Pit Z both uncovered graves earlier than the Royal Cemetery main burials. These graves were eventually given JNG numbers, a continuous sequence across Pits W, X, Y, and Z that collectively came to be considered area PJ. PJ initially stood for Pit J but the concentration of burials found in this pit (renamed Pit Y) gave rise to the use of the abbreviation PJ for graves in the southern extension of area PG in Pit X. Woolley believed the early graves to come from the Jemdat Nasr period (thus JNG). Note also that some JNG graves initially held PG numbers, especially in the PG/1800 sequence, and were later renumbered. | (none) |