.bk J02
.fl O626mh.j
.fd daily journal O626
.ei mh
.ed O626
.rd O626
.ri mh

-dy GB, Marillyn, Iko, Barbara and I went out this morning to discuss where to lay the squares for J02. We agreed on six squares west of the long German trench revealing the staircase. The exact location of the trenches will be decided upon once Barbara plots the location of the door jams and the oval into a map. The overall goals for J02 are: 1) to create a perspective view of the monumental platform, i.e. to create enough space in front of the staircase and the terrace wall that allows the viewers to appreciate the size and complexity of the temple complex; 2) to expose the door jam and the possible apron flanking the staircase; 3) dating the floor(s) that go with the staircase. This will give us a date for the temple complex. 4) link the staircase with the oval in J01 East excavated last year. 

-sg The first task is to clean a part of the long German trench which exposes the staircase. We will not clean all of it but start about 2 m north of the door jams and continue about 5 m south of it. We will begin on Sunday June 27 by collapsing the western wall of the trench just north and south of the door jams. In order to keep track of the material coming from the collapse, we will start removing the dirt from the south and continue north in about 20 cm layers. After the dirt from our collapse has been removed we will continue with the earlier, weather induced collapse. This collapse is very hard and compacted thus we will precede with big picks. The dirt will be hoisted up with the help of the machine and shifted, collected and catalogued. Everything will be recorded as Q-lots and -items. Once we reach the original bottom of the excavation trench we will level and clean it hoping to follow the original bottom since the Germans interpreted that to be a plaza floor. After the trench has been cleaned be can start removing the topsoil from the squares. The above should be accomplished before the arrival of Alexia Pavan, the principal excavator. 
-sg Since our units intersect with the German units, we will first proceed to their level and then continue down in the whole unit. The initial excavation should be fast since the soil above the terrace should be rather clean and should not contain any features. The oval wall should be approximately 2 m down at an elevation of ca. 93 m. Once we reach the wall, we will continue excavation outside the terrace. At that point the excavation will be carried out slower and with more care. We will pay special attention to possible floor features abutting the wall. The Germans found a floor in their long trench at the elevation of 87 m. We do not know whether this is the original floor level, since their excavation did not expose the connection between the door jam and the staircase. We will continue excavating in the German trench until we reach this level, but this will be done once the team is in full strength.