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Code
KK11.18
Season
2011
Narrative

Started slightly late (10:40) because of tour of Gegharot.

Day spent tying up loose ends in WSAC2 as we prepare to open up the rest of the room (hopefully) for the rest of the season. In the morning 3 workers cleaned in Locus 29, the overburden on top of the doorway in the SW wall of the room, removing some of the upper doorway blockage/wall fall. In the meantime, I opened Locus 30 as a 1.8 by 1.8 meter area extending from the eastern corner in the area of the doorway into WSAD, and had 4 workers dig there to try and answer some of the questions about the SW face of that doorway. Last year we were left confused that two of the very large stones which seem to be the face of the doorway appeared to be floating on soil and not other rocks, and I wanted to dig behind them to try and catch a real face. This locus had a very black, loamy matrix and a ton of ceramics (a lot of BA) and bones including a small mortar and a ceramic disk fragment. The excavation of this area did not answer many questions, though; the large rock that sat at the eastern corner dislodged and fell into WSAD and the guys had to break it, but it left a gap to the next stone to the SW, and more of the interior rubble fill of the wall started appearing. It seems strange that the doorway would be much wider than the typical 1.4, so it is still possible that the large stone somehow shifted forward and the face of the doorway is somewhere underneath it. At the end of the day I closed this locus and poked around under that rock but was nervous about it falling as well.
After the guys got rid of Locus 29 in the SW doorway, I opened Locus 31 as the browner silty matrix beneath 29, which was also full of a mixture of small to medium sized stones, likely doorway blockage and maybe wall fall. A large groundstone came out of this matrix. I took some photographs as the elevation went down and we came into a more clay-y matrix similar to the cultural fill near the floor in the rest of the operation. At the end of the day, most of this locus had been removed and the sides of the doorway needed to be cleaned, although the NW face of the doorway looks good and the SE face is messy and confusing, with the interior rubble fill spilling out toward the room and several large stones at the bottom which look like blockage but which need to be investigated tomorrow.

I spent the day starting the baulk drawing of the NW baulk in WSAC2, but because of the rain and overall dampness of the day it was difficult to clearly see the stratigraphy. Tomorrow we are going to open the rest of the room.