2008-07.01. Tuesday. cold, windy but bright. today we started by getting the last of the soil from cleaning out locus 106 out of the eastern end of the trench. this had to be done first, so that we could begin cleaning off the 'floor' context which presumably lies beneath the conservation plastic from 2006, which has been obscured by our destruction and dirt- moving. we also cleaned off (again) the stones and spaces between the tall wall courses-- ie locus 102. this revealed a greater depth of topsoil in the western end of the locus, which will need to be dug at some point-- though also begging the question of whether the shorter, southern wall might have been laid on topsoil over the bedrock. a large quantity of bones and some sherds continued to come out of locus 106-- i am trying to keep the workers from underdigging the stones, both because it;s dangerous and because it tends to confuse the loci-- also i am working on having them dig in one direction and not spread dirt around on the surfaces they just cleaned. for instance, between close surveilance and working during their breaks i managed to reveal a spread of dark ashy stainings across the floor area-- i will presume that this is the top of the awaited locus 105, or the late bronze floor i had assumed was directly underneath the conservation materials. though i dont yet have any sign of large vessels or sherds/ bones lying on a lower floor, i am hoping to uncover a floor in patches, which i will hopefully be able to see in some semblance of the same time-- while at the same time trying to avoid the inevitable 'creation' of a floor which occurs when such open spaces are excavated in large level passes. but until we can stop spreading dirt around the trench as workers get tired of shoveling and switch to trowelling and vice versa. this is goin to be difficult. the rockfall to the north of the trench is still complicating things a little-- basically confusing the possibility of stone features lower down with large fallen stones embedded in a mix of clay and looser, darker soil. this afternoon Seyran found a clay spindle- looking object near the rock- fall, more or less on the clay matrix, a few inches of topsoil under the pedestaled rockfall. the level for the isolated artifact was 2283. 15 masl. a little later a small groundstone artifact came up from the soil around the western wall segments. this may be from locus 107 writ strictly, or may have fallen out of the wall, as this is an area of the trench which has received more sparse attention since the beginning of the work. for tomorrow. i hope to finish cleaning the floor for maximal visibility in the morning, and try to articulate the distinction between 'floor' or protofloor and the northern rock collapse, so that removing the rocks might yield as much information as possible.