August 7, 2000

We start the day alone, without Elvan. She has moved to area F. We have a new worker, Ramazan. We are cleaning out all the old rocks, almost all the loci will disappear today. We chopped into L1021 and L1011 first, and took apart the smaller L1027. Our goal is to level the trench, so only the big rocks found yesterday in the Northeast corner are showing.

The rocks of L1021 used to form the rings around the pits L1023, L1024. There are many nice rocks in L1011. I found a lot of rocks which have been worked. There is also a lot of pottery. It is amazing how much stuff they seem to have reused. There were a lot of rocks worth saving so I had to open two bags.

I will open a new kt for anything directly under L1011. The wall didn't go all that deep. Maybe 3 courses at most on the uphill (East) side, but tappered down West.

Now I will cut down L1019. The tent just ripped a meter off the West side. What a day. As Chuck points out, "I lost my tent, my rocks, and my woman all in one day." It is one of those days. We are removing the West half of L1026. I have seen ash in some dirt after we cleaned L1026. Also under L1021 there is a potentially more dark surface which may be a burnt surface.

Finally we took the big rock out of L1022 and leveled that. Also, what was left of L1025 at the level of L1024, I cut down and screened half of it.

Then we swept clean and looked at our new flat floor. I took elevations and measured a bunch of new loci.

The day is going very late because a 60 Minutes team of reporters and photographers are here. We will start to dig our new loci, L1044, the East part. Also we are articulating L1039 rocks.