Jawan Tomb Report Page 2
Figure 3 - Tomb Floor Plan
Figure 4 - Detail of cut limestone blocks
After the dead had been put into the inside pits, these were covered with large limestone slabs and then coated with juss. Additional alternating layers of rubble and juss were piled on top of the cover in order to seal the tomb. The outside boxes had simply a cover of limestone slabs covered with juss.
When I first visited the tomb on March 23, I saw that the interior, central chamber as well as all the alcoves, had been entered into a long time ago, and the contents of bones, limestone, cement, and sand thrown about. Furthermore between March 23 and March 26, when we started working, a crowd of people from a nearby village had destroyed the end of the east alcove, possibly in search of ancient treasures.
The first part of the excavation was extremely discouraging. The entire interior was disturbed. The only remains found included, next to the bones of perhaps as many as eighty skeletons, a few fragments of glass, one thin, small bronze spatula, several glass and carnelian beads, and a few pieces of both glazed and plain pottery.
The interior of the tomb proved that, although it had been designed for only six people, it had been robbed of its contents perhaps a short time after it was built, and later had been used as a burial place for the bones of other people. Some of the later dead put into the Jawan tomb had been cremated together with their belongings. Since Jawan is close to the sea and under the influence of heavy tides, and its limestone is porous, the remains in the tomb were extremely wet and had to be dug out very slowly.
In many cases I had to wait several weeks until the surface was dry, and then remove a block of dirt to let it dry outside for another several months. It may be interesting to record here that although the excavation work itself was finished in September 1952, some of the blocks of clay were allowed to dry until December 1953, that is approximately fifteen months. Nothing found inside the tomb gave any help in dating it.