This was the wrap-up week for the field season excavations with the attempt being to reserve the last two weeks for backfilling, laboratory work, and drawing. In general, it was a very wet week with rain in the afternoon on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, resulting in laboratory work being carried out by the men. Diane and Maureen arrived on Sunday for the last 3 weeks, a welcome infusion of energy as we push on to the end of the field season.

Northeast Acropolis, C117G: backfilling was begun at week’s end on Friday and Saturday morning.

Central Acropolis, C206B: section was drawn by Adrian and Cheryl on Monday and Tuesday and the excavation was backfilled on Wednesday and Thursday.

Platform B36, C207: Eric finished excavating, planning, and doing a section of C207F, an excavation to find an earlier eastern building within the platform; a basal line of stones was encountered indicative of an earlier construction. Adrian finished excavating, planning, and drawing the section of C207G, a trench through the buried western platform; no deposits were encountered, but the frontal stair exhibited two completely different construction episodes with each stairway being replastered at least once. Eric excavated C207H, removing more plaza fill in the area between the 2002 tomb and the frontal stairs for the buried western platform, establishing that the Early Classic tomb in the construction platform must have been constructed when the plaza was raised to its final level. Finally, C207E was expanded by the placement of a small trench through the lower plaza surface on axis to the buried platform, finding the western side of an even earlier buried platform that was minimally 1.5 m in height.

Structure B37, C208G and C208H: Jackie and Danielle finished the excavation and plans for both of these excavations by Wednesday and Diane took final photographs and then drew the sections of each investigation.

Via, C95: All excavations were still open in this double-group at week’s end, but most of the plans had been finished. C95F and C95H were excavated down to bedrock in their western sides by Friday. Max had removed the legs of two burials from C95H and had drawn an elevation of the south side of the earlier building by Friday. Amy and Saul labored all week in the lower tomb in C95E, which was almost finished by Saturday noon. Amy also worked with Saul on excavating and then drawing (and pulling) the contents of the tomb in the summit of C95G. Diane worked on excavating the lower bedrock burial in the western side of this same excavation; by Saturday noon, the femurs of at least 3 individuals had been recovered along with 14 ceramic vessels and a figurine of an old man; this burial appears to extend to the south and may actually represent an infilled tomb; if this is the case, it would need to be reopened and finished in 2017.

The rain has slowed things down in the field, but has caused a lot of washing and numbering to have been done in lab.

Adrian and Cheryl drawing the Central Acropolis section

C206B being backfilled

C207 final clean up

C207 Trenches through early platform and plaza floor

C207E Jaime and deep excavation

C95E lower tomb basal level_

C95H Max drawing and Gustavo digging

C95G Diane digging SD C95G-3

SD C95G-3 figurine

SD C95G-3 small bottle