All backfilling was completed by Monday at 10 AM. The nine men who comprise the labor force were all placed on sherd numbering duty; by the end of the day Tuesday all of the sherds were numbered. Thus, with little left to do for the bulk of the labor pool, I took six of the men out of Caracol on Wednesday morning and brought them home to either Benque Viejo or to Soccotz. They should all be back next year for the 2024 field season.

Meanwhile, back at camp the staff focused on cataloguing all of the small artifactual materials that had been recovered during the field season, working in sequence through the various materials by substance. My task was drawing all of the ceramic vessels that we had recovered from special deposits or that were otherwise largely whole. Once the cataloguing was done and the ceramic vessels were all illustrated on graph paper, we shifted to drawing the small artifacts to scale. Mo also started packing some of the materials up for storage. The three men who are still with us worked on building a new shelf in Lab 2 for this year’s materials and also on shoring up Lab 2 so that it does not have any issues in the off season. They are also doing minor camp repair.

On Saturday March 18, the segment that was filmed at Caracol on March 1 by CBS Saturday Morning with Jeff Glor aired on national television. The segment was seven and a half minutes long and CBS news did an excellent job showcasing our long-term research commitment at Caracol. Both the video https://www.cbsnews.com/video/how-an-american-couple-are-piecing-together-a-lost-civilization/#x

and a short news release

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/married-couple-work-to-unearth-secrets-of-lost-mayan-civilization/ were posted on the internet for viewing.

One more week to go.