Excavating Monument B3

Since its discovery in 1998 during mechanical terracing work, three excavation steps were made on B3. The first was a manual clearing of debris laying over a quadrangular stone surface, which was done by the RNR-RC team short after discovery. The cleared surface was photographed and roughly described (Fig. 10). The results led to a preliminary report (RNR-RC / Helvetas 1999) and to the later archaeological investigations by the SLFA team.

Fig. 10

The second step was the investigation we made in April 1999 to determine the exact shape of the stone structure, its integration within the surrounding sediment deposits, and eventually to discover samples for dating the structure. At the end of our first excavation, the structure had the shape of a trapezoidal platform built on a sloping ground. Although the platform showed an almost flat surface, it appeared that the stones of its surface center were marked by strong centripetal sloping angles, position which formed a clear depression. This indicated that the platform once contained a covered hollow volume, or chamber, which collapsed in the course of time. The archaeological documentation gathered in 1999 led to a site characterization in our preliminary report (Blumer and Vial 1999), which served to plan the next excavation steps.

Between April and July 2000, it clearly appeared that one of the planed new buildings was directly competing its location with the old stone platform, thus creating a conflict situation. The excavation 2000 was intended to resolve this problem by achieving a full structural and archaeological documentation of the platform, which would then have been removed to leave the spot to the modern construction. In the course of the excavation, it appeared that the monument did not only consist of the trapezoidal stone platform of limited surface uncovered in 1999, but also of a surrounding retaining wall of very large dimension and identical trapezoidal shape. From this point, it was clear that we had to invest supplementary time to follow and uncover the newly found superstructure, and this activity took most of our working time in 2000. It was even necessary to extend the campaign duration for one month in order to achieve most of the excavation work.