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Shortly after this first discovery,
as the terracing works were going on in the southeastern part of the building
yard, a second spot attracted the attention of the builders. Under a slightly
marked but large heap of sediment removed by the caterpillar, the team
uncovered a flat area were stones predominated largely (Fig.
10). They
subsequently cleaned this surface by hand and uncovered an almost perfectly flat
area with clear delimited borders, thus indicating an anthropic origin. This
structure received the appellation "Location 3", later B3. From this point, it seemed clear
that the area had a puzzling high potential for archaeological features and
ruins. Mr. Baumgartner took some time to survey the surroundings of the
building site and discovered more unnoticed features. He recognized one near
"Location 1"/B1, in the form of a low-lying stone wall which was
slightly protruding from an apparently natural sub-terrace riser, about 10m to
the west of B1 and about 10m in length. This was then "Location
2"/B2. His survey encompassed also the
immediate vicinity of the building yard. About 150m to the south of
"Location 1"/B1, an unusual mound (Fig.
11) was recognized on the
summit of the 70m terrace riser. This mound, about 7m in diameter, is located
in the inner part of a forested area (blue pine), but near its edge.
Approximately circular in shape, it was initially covered by a few trees, which
were recently cut to clear the area and to avoid further damage to the
structure. In the opinion of many residents and foreign Helvetas crewmembers,
this mound could be a ruined watchtower eventually connected somehow to the
other archaeological features. It was given the code "Location 4"/B4. The following people are known to
have inspected the archaeological features; they are key persons regarding
contextual information about the finding: Mr. Fritz Baumgartner, architect in
Thimpu, Mr. Walter Roder, Helvetas Co-Manager in Jakar, and Mr. Bhim
Bdr. Pradhan, yard engineer. We could gather important information from
those persons to get an overview of the preliminary investigations done before
our coming and to reconstruct precisely the provenience of some of the
findings. During the days following the discoveries, in order to eventually determine the time setting of the structure B1, workers started to excavate the sediment filling the inner volume of the stone construction. During this process, a quite important number of stones and slabs have been unavoidably removed from the upper part of the structure because of destabilization of the construction but also to gain an easier access. During this process, the workers found archaeological material, especially in the deep levels. We shall describe this material later in this report together with the material gained from the April campaign.
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Copyright 2000 by Blumer R. and Vial F.
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