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Code
AFG.08.38
Season
2008
Narrative

While the early morning was rainy, and the day cut short by rain at 3PM, we enjoyed a productive and active day at Aragatsiberd. In AB4 we opened locus 12 amongst the emerging ower trench constructions and we excavated still lower in locus 11, trench northeast. In locus 8 we reached bedrock across the entire locus, south of all the aforementioned constructions. We had the total station at Aragatsiberd today and were able to shoot in the rest of the new rebar/concrete datums, as well as some additional surface architecture.Locus 11 continued to be a tough, compact, and rocky place to excavate, but contiued to produce moderate amounts of materials, particularly EB ceramics. We likely descended 15 centimeters today, from our position at the end of work on Sunday. In locus 8 we quickly reached bedrock in the morning, the same red crumbly bedrock found in the adjacent portions of trench west. This means that approximately half of the trench (perhaps more) now contains bedrock, or architecture sitting on bedrock. It seems likely that we will indeed finish this trench this week. We also opened locus 12 today, directly to the northwest of locus 10, between what seem to be to additional emerging walls of other constructions. If I had to summarize the architectural organization in the trench I would describe it as one large, higher, later wall at trench south (locus 4) and two (possible) walls, forming a 'V' shape, that emerge from the west trench bedrock and trend northeast (essentiall) towards locus 11. The southeast quarter of the trench is occupied by a carved bedrock floor, but it appears to be composed of a completely different bedrock than the crumbly red material in trench west. It's a more solid more worked surface, similar to the bedrock floor in AB3.The total station mapping was intermitent today due to the on-and-off rain. We were able to map in benchmarks 14 and 15 on the hill's west side, the new AB4 dautm, as well as several other west-side walls. One additional mapping day is needed to finish shooting all the surface architecture.