At one of our newest units we’ve uncovered a wall. By the end of the week we identified 4 courses of stones. The verdict is still out on what time period it dates to, but we have collected a number of carbon samples, which should help us to narrow down the date of the structure.

Week 2 also brought a new set of adventures. The Izapa community has been attempting to spread the word about the importance of the site, and a bunch of news teams came to visit the site this week. You can access some of the news reports at the links below:

El Orbe: http://elorbe.com/portada/01/23/localizan-ceramica-y-obsidiana-en-excavaciones-de-izapa.html

Diario del Sur: http://www.oem.com.mx/diariodelsur/notas/n3266494.htm

We found our first mystery artifact from the excavations. It’s a thick brick-like ceramic piece. It is flat on one side. On the other side it has an impressed design (possibly from a basket), evidence of burning, and a broken piece that extended out of the center. The sides, widthwise, are both flat and show no evidence of being broken, which would we expected if it were a fragment of a ceramic vessel. The sides lengthwise have both been broken, suggesting that the artifact was once longer. The piece comes from a suspected domestic context, but so far we haven’t been able to come up with a proposed use that we are happy with. Any ideas?

Mystery artifact recovered from IHAP 2014 excavations