August 7, 2000

Today we are continuing to dig in the eastern half of L 2001. The soil remains the same coarse granule texture, and it seems likely that we are still digging through a topsoil/wash layer from further up the hill. We are going to try to level the trench N/S first, and then work from there.

After quite a bit of digging, we finally started finding some harder soil in the deepest part of the trench, that is near the center of the trench along the S balk. Andy came by and we decided to start digging in the western half of 2001, starting with a section on the north side of the trench.

Very shortly after we had started digging this section, the workmen uncovered a very nice cylinder seal, depicting on the side that wasn't covered with dirt a man fighting a lion. Also in this area was found a large donut shaped basalt weight.

The rest of the day was spent cleaning the sections, and removing all the dirt that was dug today. There remains some work to do tomorrow to level the area dug in the western half of the trench with that in the eastern half.