We arrived on site slightly late today because one of the wheels on the car needed to be changed. This meant no 10 AM perikor, but that seemed to be okay with the workers. Arthur and Aris are continuing to work in T22, while I have Arthurik, Gennell and Arman clearing the topsoil from T27. They are making good progress and by the end of the day they had cleared nearly half of the 10 m x 5 m trench. I hope that by the end of the week (2 more work days) we should have the topsoil removed, and may be (if we’re lucky) I can open a few focused loci. After discussing the opening of T27 with Adam and Ruben yesterday they seem to want to pinpoint out excavations in it, at least for this year, since excavating all of T27 in the remaining season may be a bit too ambitious. In any case, a line of stones does seem to be appearing in the middle of T27 which has the same orientation to walls in T22, so this seems promising. Will continue clearing the topsoil tomorrow. Ceramics, obsidian and bone are all coming from this topsoil layer, and ceramic and bone in large numbers (a full bag of each already).
In T22, Arthur has finished clearing the rubble/wall fall that was in the N of L103, and brought L103 even with L105. Since there is no architecture separating the two loci (except for the three large stones that seem to create a wall/gate that were originally part of L103) I have closed L103 and L105, and opened L108 in the hope that this locus can take us down to the bedrock. As the day was finishing we had reached bedrock in the NW portion of L108, however in the middle of the locus, just to the W of the most northern larger rock (the “gate” stone?), and seemingly lying on the same level, a sherd scatter began to emerge. I decided to re-cover it and deal with it tomorrow, rather than rush it, since this may help us to date the large rock wall-- and perhaps there is charcoal associated with these sherds? I have also opened up a new locus to the S of the trench, where Aris is working. This is L107 and is mainly the clearing of lines of rocks (walls?) and some areas between these walls. This should help us decide which stones are walls and which are just rock tumble.