Another busy week at Caracol. Everyone has been hard at work in the trenches in anticipation of transitioning into laboratory work. We are hoping to wrap up excavations next week so that everyone can move into the lab to process all of the materials from this field season. Until now, we have been working in the lab in the evenings and Egor has been “holding down the fort” during the day, organizing things as they come in from the field.

   In C241B (Canta), the new crypt in the rear of the structure contained a single individual with head to the south with an Early Classic basal-flange bowl placed over the legs. This person was sealed under three different floors. Excavation also removed most of the summit down to bedrock without finding another deposit, although there is some sherd material of Preclassic date directly on bedrock. In the tomb in front, another layer of bone was uncovered of a fully articulated individual with head to the north; this chamber is now quite deep. Investigations in the plaza revealed two skulls and disarticulated long bones in a square stone cist set adjacent to the north section in the plaza. Also discovered in the western portion of the trench was another burial placed directly into fill with head to south and the skull partially covered by an inverted basal-flange vessel. Work on all these interments continued throughout the week.

   In C242B (Ayayayay), work continued on all of the open chambers. The lower double-decker tomb on the summit was fully excavated and drawn by Rumari and Flavio; it yielded a footed dish on its northern end and two broken stacked bowls on its western side; thus, five vessels accompanied the two bodies that were in this small chamber. In the rear (eastern) chamber, Flavio and Cameron finished the excavation finding a set of jadeite earflares and a jadeite pendent on the northern part of the chamber where the skull would have been. Directly south of this chamber is another capstone over an open air cist that we will work on next week. In the front of C242B, Gabriela and Jaime excavated an extended burial with head to the south in a cist in the plaza that was accompanied by a Belize Red plate and a cylinder. The capstones and re-entry point of a chamber set under the structure stair were also drawn and the chamber was opened but not fully excavated this week. This chamber appears to have had a northern entryway. The west wall of the chamber had been removed in Late Classic times in association with the placement of slanted stone slabs over this part of the crypt; a Late Classic burial with a Belize Red plate and cylinder was set west of these slabs. The elaborate cache in the plaza that had been placed in a polychrome bowl with almost twenty finger caches was also completely excavated this week; there were finger caches and obsidian eccentrics in the bowl (more finger caches were outside the bowl).

   In C117H, we finished with our excavation thanks to Mo and to Diane (who flew in for the week to help out). More on this later.