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Context Description:
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Room 9 was the kitchen, or was at all events used as such during the early foundation of the house: there was a circular bread oven resting on a clay floor at the same level as the early burnt brick pavement in Room 8. It is possible that in the succeeding period the room ceased to be a kitchen, as at the normal level of the upper pavements there was a burnt-brick floor with bricks measuring 0.255-0.235 X 0.17-0.18 X 0.06-0.07 m, and below the floor a ruined corbel vaulted grave which had evidently been dug down below the level of this pavement. Presumably therefore at this period Room 9 had ceased to be a kitchen, for as such it would hardly have been used to house the family vault. In the SE wall there was a blocked doorway showing that at one time there had been access to No. 2 Straight Street 3 3 but that at the extreme end of the Larsa period the two houses were separate dwellings. There was a doorway of the same period in the SE wall of Room 1 which had been blocked at the same time as this. The mud brick walls of the early foundation contained bricks measuring 0.235-0.24 X 0.15 X 0.07 m, a size of brick freely used during the Third Dynasty, and at intervals matting had been used to obtain a through bond, a method characteristic of the pre-Larsa mud brick buildings. The burnt-brick footings of the SE wall were not bonded with the older mud brick substructure of the NE wall. The older mud brickwork had a thick coating of mud plaster.2
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