This week we have finished the investigation of the first phase of the burned house in the centre of the trench and documented the now exposed second phase, before excavating it. The north part of the feature is still a bit unclear, whereas the southern part is only disturbed by a couple of pits. (Pic. Burned I, Burned II)

Apart from the burned house, we are in the process of excavating a couple of hearths in the unburned house in the southwest corner of the trench, as well as tracing the house walls and the floor of the structure. This process has been quite complicated and slow since all the features is covered by a compact clay layer. (Pic Unburned I, Unburned II)

During the week a lot of effort has also been devoted to the investigation and sampling of the palaeoenvironmental context of the Százhalombatta tell. Gabriella Kovács and Charles French have located a major palaeochannel system, which is evident in at least six locations in the 20km stretch of the Benta valley that runs to the west from our site. Each locale contained waterlogged organic muds and channel bed silts which match the sequence already analysed, by Pál Sümegi, from the Biatorbágy Lake in the western end of the survey area. This suggests the presence of a much larger meandering river system, with an associated marshy floodplain zone during the Bronze Age (or 2nd millennium BC). The top of each sample profile also contained both sand lenses and loessic silt alluvial deposits, which suggests that limited soil erosion in the valley system occurred in later prehistoric or earlier historic times