Today we took down the near-floor soils and flat-lying stones in AC1. we started by taking out the stones, and working the soils down to the compressed levels beneath the fallen stones. Beneath the gravely (decayed cement and stone) levels of Locus 5 and the fallen masonry (ashlar facing stones and unworked rubble stones) of Locus 6 I designated a new locus for today, locus 7-- which proved to be fairly thick, especially in the northeast and southeast parts of the trench. while bringing down locus 7 in the northeast corner we uncovered an ashy lens, just adjacent to the large fallen ashlar facing block. I had designated a cleaning (mixed) locus for bringing down the 'berm' that had developed along the eastern margin: this is Locus 8 and caught (i think) much of the higher-lying ceramic materials from the ash lens in Locus 7. We succeeded in uncovering some sort of clayey, more consolidated level beneath Locus 7: we will continue cleaning this level tomorrow: it will be locus 9.