After working for two weeks in Room 5 of the Great Bath, conclusions are hard to come to. Everyday our theories were upturned by new finds and without being able to complete our unit, there is no way to say for certain what any of our finds mean. However, our big finds have given us some major clues about what our area may have been used for at some point. In the two weeks my team spent in our unit, we found three coins, a pipe connecting to a possible drain, a heavily corroded knife, a huge amount of pottery, bones, a loom weight, and part of a corinthian capital. The bones that we found were mainly teeth and jawbones, likely meaning that the bones were part of a trash pile; heads of animals were not consumed or used for any specific purpose. The huge amounts of pottery we found could also indicate trash, probably used for leveling the floor, especially because the sherds were mainly diagnostic and likely thrown away due to defects. We found an exposed pipe near the north wall, which I believe indicates that we were excavating underneath the main floor level because the pipe was not in a floor or enclosed by anything. This would support the theory that bones and pottery were used to level the most recent floor because an exposed pipe would make the most sense underneath a floor if not encased in anything. Because we only found a few heavily corroded coins and some other miscellaneous items, I believe that our unit was once used as a storage room. These items were likely washed from other sites and ended up in our unit by chance. These findings do not impact my interpretation of our site, and if anything support the theory of a storage room because there were so few of these special finds in comparison to our massive collection of bones and pottery.
The theory that our site was a storage room connects to a larger interpretation of the Great Bath as a whole, and helps map individual rooms and uses of the complex. We worked next to the main room of the Great Bath, and it would make the most sense that our smaller site was used as a storage room for the larger structure; a floor leveled from broken pottery, bones, and other trash would not be the most appealing sight but in a storage room not open to visitors of the Bath, the appearance of the floor would not matter. The only certain room of the Great Bath was that the largest room was used as the actual bath. Mosaics and basins were found, indicating its use. Uncovering our potential storage room helps generate additional theories of what the typical layout of a Roman Bath in the Antiochia Ad Cragum region would be. A storage room next to the main room would not only make sense, but help archaeologists map future sites. Beginning work on this site, I was unsure of what we were uncovering. The diagnostic pottery and surplus of bones definitely confused me. I had no idea what our finds could mean, and I thought the large diagnostic pottery sherds could mean an earthquake collapsed on large vessels used for storage or something else. However, digging further down under the thick layer of pottery helped me realize that our strange assortment of materials would have been typical floor leveling tools. The further we excavated, the more sure I was that this was a storage room. The pipe we found on the last day nearly confirmed my thoughts. I wish we had more time to work in this unit, but I’m happy we got as far as we did. The pipe was the most exciting find for me, and I hope archaeologists continue to uncover more of the pipe. It was found in situ, and I would love to know how far it goes and what it connects to because it appears to be completely intact. On the last day, we also uncovered what seems to be a semicircle attached to the west wall and I am very curious about that as well. We did not make much progress on that potential feature, and I would love to see further excavation of that area.