This was an incredibly eventful week during what seems to be an incredibly wet season. We had two completely sunny days this week and then intermittent rain and drizzle on the other days. We are employing large tarps over all of the excavations to keep the ground (and us) dry. Other than the weather, everything else is going smoothly.

                Excavations have continued “full-steam” ahead in three locations: the Canta residential group (C241B and C241C), the Ayayayay residential group (C242B), and in the North Acropolis (C117H).

                In the Canta residential, we have finished excavating the chultun which proved to have two chamber, one running southeast and the other running southwest (C241C). The southwest chamber was empty but the southeast chamber (the larger of the two) had a burial in it. We did not excavate the burial because the roof of the chamber appeared on the verge of collapse. Hannah was able to get sections and plans of the chambers before we abandoned that excavation due to safety issues. The trench through the eastern building (C241B) is progressing downwards to bedrock. The rear crypt burial was finished by week’s end and appeared to have only held a single individual accompanied by four vessels. Another chamber (crypt) in the area of the front steps has so far yielded three individuals (based on skulls) and six pottery vessels (a deep bowl in the northern part of the chamber and an incised cylinder in the southern part of the chamber along with four dishes along the south wall); it dates from the early part of the Late Classic Period. The part of the excavation in the plaza is down to bedrock in most places; there is a well-constructed cist in the northwest corner of the investigations that contains the legs of an individual. To the west of the stairway crypt along the south side of the excavation was an extensive deposit of cache vessels (finger bowls, urns, and buckets) strewn into a large pit; below these vessels there is the compacted body of an individual that is currently being excavated; west of the body is another capstone that we will lift next week. On the summit of the building, excavation has so far revealed three sequent floors with the basal stones of an earlier structure on lowest floor; this construction was covered by the second lowest floor and there was a spondylus shell in the fill for the floor; there is yet another floor level to the front of this construction.

                In the Ayayayay residential group (C242B), this week was also busy and productive. In the plaza, we have not dealt with the cist in the northwest corner of the trench yet, but Gabriella succeeded in recording the cache of large and small buckets and finger bowls just east of it; this deposit produced approximately 16 limestone bars and 2 jadeite beads. No excavation took place on the front slope of the building this week; almost all of our efforts were focused on the summit. The initial chamber that was found last week was completely excavated, which led to the discovery that it directly overlay another chamber (what is called a “double-decker” tomb at Caracol based on the one excavated in front of Structure A6 in the 1950s). By week’s end, the capstones were revealed and the chamber proved to hold two broken bowls. One protruded above the soil level and had a very evident hieroglyphic text around its rim. This text names Double-Comb of Naranjo and is very similar to the one found on a bowl in Burial 72 at Tikal. Unfortunately, most of the images on the side of the bowl were buried in the dirt and have been eroded by the acidity of Caracol’s dirt. The chamber found to the east of this pair was also excavated this week and proved to have at least four broken vessels and a single individual in it. An open-air cist was found at a higher level (in line with the chamber) in the south wall of the excavation. This cist contained an intact face cache that portrayed the jaguar-god of the underworld and was associated with a series of limestone bars and obsidian eccentrics. Nine obsidian eccentrics were outside the vessel (matching the 9 lords of the night) and more were within the vessel along with at least one stingray spine. In the western summit (the front of the eastern building), Jaime has been working on another collapsed chamber that fell down the front slope; it had massive capstones covering it (one of which is in section). It is ready for excavation, probably next week.

                The Northeast Acropolis excavation (C117H) also proved interesting. Last week we had cleared the tomb that was first excavated in 1993 and begun to subfloor it. Within a short time, we discovered an airhole beneath it and to the east directly under both the eastern tomb wall and the front building balk that is visible on the surface. Eventually we opened up an area large enough to determine that a chamber existed. It took a little more work to be able to gain entry. We came in just south of its northern roofing, which utilized angled black slate to cap the interment (making it difficult to navigate). The chamber dates to the early Early Classic Period and appears to be contemporary with the Teotihuacan-style burial recovered in 2010 in the middle of the Northeast Acropolis plaza. It contains a basal-flange bowl on its northern end that has iconography that is duplicative of the scenes on four of the basal-flange vessels from the 2010 cremation. This deposit should help us in piecing together what kind of relationship Caracol had with Teotihuacan ca. A.D. 350.