The Best Laid Plans . . .

​3 June, 2013
It has been three weeks since excavations started on site and despite the best laid plans this is the first blog for 2013 excavation season.  I would like to say it was because we haven’t had internet access, but we now have limited and erratic connection in Indian Church; the truth is that we have been so busy that I regrettably haven’t been able to write as I would like. 
 
What has kept us so busy you wonder?  Well wondering is exactly what is kept us busy.  We joke that the catch phrase for Ka’Kabish is “curiousier and curiouser” (in that nothing seem to be what we expect) and this season has proven to be the model and not the exception for that phrase.
 
First, as Ka’Kabish is now an official field school (in that students can get credit for participating) we have more students that before which have allowed us to open up a series of units in the Plaza D south area where we excavated last year with great success.  Our students, while drawn largely from Trent University, also hail from UCalgary, UWinnipeg, and McGill, with Graduate students from Trent, UCalgary, and Northern Illinois University. 
 
We started with four units this year plus excavations into a second chultun; these units, and their purposes, are as follows:

• the second chultun is to provide Toni (see staff page) with comparable material for her Master’s thesis on the possible function of chultuns in this section of Belize (she excavated a Chultun in the B-Group in 2012 [see the 2012 interim report available on our website for details]);
• a 2x2 m unit to the west of our Unit 3 from last year (Unit 4) intended to follow the line of the building westward to locate the northwest corner of the structure (we found the northeast last year in Unit 2);
• two 2x3 metre units to the south of Unit 2 (Units 5 and 6 north to south) designed to locate and follow the corner of the building and expose the east wall of the structure;
• a 2x2 metre unit (Unit 7) 12 metres to the north of this cluster of units intended to help find where the platform construction might change from the dense floors and secondary middle fill found in the 2011, and 2012 excavations into the plaza on the south side of the D-5 building to the heavy loose laid Terminal Classic fill found in the  2010 units on the north side of D-5.

 
Where to start with the curiosities . . .
 
Unit 7 hit bedrock a scant 50 cm down along the northern side of their unit.  The bedrock did dip to approximately 1 metre down on the south side, but was still far higher than the roughly 2.3 metres that was documented in Units 1 and 2 in 2012!  This suggests that the original Middle Formative terrain may have been hilly and that the D-5 building may have been constructed to take advantage of a natural rise.  More work will be needed excavating this building to determine the extent of the bedrock.
 
Unit 4 found the building . . . but it continued into the west wall of the unit, meaning that we still have not located the northwest corner of the structure and therefore have no dimension for that side of the building.  It is currently now at 6 metres wide with no idea of how much longer the building will go. Moreover, it appears that there is a heavy concentration of white stucco on the front the building.  This concentration runs under the north wall of course and as there is not enough time to excavate another 2x2 metre unit we will have to wait until next year to see what this white stucco means. 
 
Units 5 and 6 are perhaps the most enigmatic of the units.
 
We have found a SERIES of platforms in these units starting with what were likely Post-Classic domestic platforms just below the surface.  These platforms (small single course constructions) were commonly used to elevate pole and thatch structures above the ground level.  Many sites, including Lamanai, have these platforms and they are often evidence of the common people moving into the open plaza spaces after the site was other abandoned. The area would have been above the general ground level, has a good breeze and is flat and open so it would be natural that people would want to reoccupy the area.
 
What gets weird, however, is that below these we have been UNABLE to find the edge of the building discovered in 2012.  As of this writing we have actually removed backfill from Unit 2 to expose the tarp that covers and protects the previously discovered surface of the structure. While we did find what we believe to be the SURFACE of the structure in the immediately adjacent Unit 5 we have been unable to find the corner!  It appears that the building may NOT head south, but may curve back eastward (right under the wall of course!) making the platform far more complicated and possibly multi-leveled!!
 
Our plans for tomorrow are to extend the north wall of Unit 5 by 40 cm and see if we can’t find what happened to our corner and if there is another curve to the wall and twist to our ideas about what this structure looks like.
 
Stay tuned!!