Floor

Susanna Blåndman

The floor was cleaned and documented during the field season of 2010. It consisted of three different layers: one from the eruption and two original, presented according to their elevation. The original layers were covered by a modern protective layer consisting of small lava gravel and loosely packed soil.

Eruption layer; ash
Beneath the modern layer a layer of firmly packed ash covered part of the surface. Part of this layer was removed when we opened a small-scale trench along the east wall. In that area the layer was 0.05 m thick. We did not to remove the layer in the other parts of the room.

Cocciopesto floor
A fragmentary and extremely badly preserved patch of a cocciopesto floor, 0.22 m long and up to 0.14 m wide, is located along the east wall, at a distance of 1.18 m from the north corner. It does not abut on the wall but it abuts on the feature in the northeast corner.

Filling material
Due to the cavity in the floor in room 4 we opened a small-scale trench in front of the east wall, at a distance of 1.18 m from the north corner. The trench was 1.55 m long and 0.40 m wide. In order to open the trench we removed the firm layer of ash that turned out to be 0.05 m thick. The layer beneath it consisted of filling material. We stopped excavating after 0.12 m and we could not find any correspondence to the cavity in room 4.