Introduction

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During this season's excavations of Tesoro Trench-26, three major cuts will be made in the baulks surrounding the South-East Building.  Each cut, due to its distinct location, will have its own goals and problems.  Three separate trench books will be kept ( AC I and AAC I ).  The purpose of this book will be to record the data from a cut which will be made north of T-26, starting in grids Q-U/58-59.

The goals of this cut are as follows:

1)  To define more accurately the northern side of the South-East Building.

2)  To search for missing fragments of the canopic antefix head mould found in beta/56 (see CT III 1985, p. 76 ) and to look for similar moulds and/or the heads which were produced from them.

3)  To explore the problem of the curious lack of lateral sima feline

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waterspouts and female antefix heads found in the western end of the South-East Building ( CT III 1985, p. 6 ).

The absense of sima and antefix in this area suggests that the building did not fall in upon itself.  Perhaps it fell to the north or to the south.  If the building fell to the south, the slope of the hill and erosion would make recovery unlikely.  However, if the tile fall went north, it is entirely possible that a neat row of antefix heads and waterspouts are preserved in a line where they fell from the roof.  Such a tile fall existed for the Upper Building.

All these possibilities are based on the assumption that these antefix heads and feline waterspouts actually decorated the South-East Building and that they were not merely being produced in the building.

Due to the location of this cut,

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it is likely that fine redware, common in T-25 ( CT I , CT II , CT III ) will be encountered.  Also, the northward progression of the cut will bring T-26 closer to both ivory-rich T-23 and to T-22, where fragments of a terracotta boar's head statue were found ( SL I, p. 77 ).

The grid system will be the same as that employed by Mark Toby for T-26.  For discussion of problems with the grid system, see CT I, p. 14 , MT II, p. 77 , MT V, p. 8-15 , and MT VII, p. 82 .

The tile, plaster, and soil dumps will be those originated by Gary Dunham in 1982 for T-25.  Soil - roughly grids 40-42 south of the southern defense wall, tile and plaster - roughly grids 24-26 ( CT I 1987, p. 7 )

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