| Entry: | Wind has got up again but it wasn't bad during site hours. We proceeded with excavation of the floors and lower deposits of Building 1. The burials are certainly going to take some time. Tona and Jenis continued to excavate burial 30, taking out the main adult body. Louise cleaned the top of the burial cut in platform 13 exposing the intact lower jaw and teeth of a juvenile. We need to make some headway here as this is our last major unexplored part of the building and we already know there are at least several individuals buried under this platform. Gavin has begun excavation of the many plaster floors on platform 110, bringing them down around the burials. Mehmet excavated the central part of the lentil bin, including a pit cut into the floors, containing slabs of collapsed wall plaster. Adnan cleared deposits in the centre of Space 71, exposing more of the obsidian deposit under the grinding emplacement, feature 27. This seems to be a deliberate deposit of projectile point manufacturing pieces. They are still in the section, but should be out soon. Serap excavated the rest of the plastered bin in Space 70, feature 34, and then generally cleaned up. After seeing to a range of things, including dealing with many visitors, I spent time excavating through the ashy trash deposits underlying the floors in Space 70. I am excavating a portion of these deposits in the NE corner of the room and have so far reached the bottom of wall 3, which we had already exposed in the excavation of pit 17 in Space 71. The bottom of wall 1 on the N side of Space 70, however, has not yet been exposed and is certainly going to be lower than wall 3. Thus it seems that the constructional sequence was: i) the clearing of an area for building, perhaps involving the levelling of an earlier structure (that issue may be resolved by future excavation below Building 1); ii) the construction of walls 1, 2, 4, 5, 6 and 7, forming the outer shell of the entire building. The possible access in wall 6, discovered yesterday, may also relate to this phase of activity; iii) the filling of the shell of the building with a fairly uniform spread of ashy debris, probably midden material brought from old rubbish dumps; iv) the construction of wall 3 overlying the ashy debris. The fact that wall 3 is built of bricks and mortar identical in every respect, except the depth of their laying, to those of walls 1, 2, 4, 5, 6 and 7, strongly suggests that steps ii) to iv) were carried out within a very short space of time, probably within a day or two. It is also striking that the original sub-floor debris is more thickly deposited in the N of the building, possibly to ensure enough sub-floor material to contain the anticipated burials, which are exclusively along the N and E sides, where the main platforms are; v) the laying of a uniform layer of orange-brown packing material over the ashy debris; vi) the laying of plaster floors throughout the building.Entered By: Roger Matthews |
