An unusual and interesting situation emerged at the end of the day in WSN. We completed the excavations of loci 28 and 29 and proceeded to dig locus 30, the narrow (1m) sliver that runs adjacent to the northeast wall and was segregated from locus 29 due to the presence of a yellowish-brown clay in this area. The unexpected discovery was a row of stones running parallel to the northeast wall. Until I dig further down alongside this alignment I cannot be sure that it is indeed a built feature, but from the looks of it now, it certainly appears to be. Yet we are rather high in the stratigraphic column to encounter an interior built feature, which leads me to wonder whether there is indeed an upper floor in WSN. There have been other hints of such an upper floor since 2010--the matrix of locus 07, the burn layer described yesterday, the very high material densities, and the two nearly complete vessels found yesterday and today (yesterday the half of a bowl, today the pot smashed under a rock whose complete profile can probably be restored). Meanwhile, today I continued to work in WSI2, cleaning locus 20. In so doing, I identified a jet black and packed burn layer at the base of the entire construction, which is particularly pronounced on the southern and southeasterly perimeter, less so on the other side. This deposit appears to rest immediately above the sterile white clay of Tsaghkahovit's "bedrock". Mickey Zardaryan visited today to consult on this construction. He views it as a cooking installation/hearth, invoking parallels to Horom room D and to Shaghat. We discussed the likelihood that the feature we see now represents a secondary construction, with the reuse of the ceramic "tiles" to bolster the "box", which had previously been part of a separate installation in which the "tray" was complete. He found further support for his suggestion in the existence of the tube that Elizabeth excavated last year, as well as the flat rectangular stone with a groundstone amidst the smaller stones surrounding it, viewing this as a grinding station of some sort. As for the very large basin stone to the southwest of the rectangle of stones, this he regarded as a mortar (one long in use). All in all, his suggestions are quite intriguing. One is still left to wonder why there is not extensive traces of soot/charcoal on the interior of the box, although it is true that the matrix inside it is the same highly packed orange clay that exists behind the box. Might room I be a space in which large scale food preparation and cooking took place? If so, what are the functions of the platform, the rectangle of stones, and other stone features in the room? And if this is what constitutes a hearth in Iron 3 Tsaghkahovit, then does this mean that food preparation on this scale did not take place in the other rooms of the complex excavated thus far, where such a feature does not exist? In either case, excavations of the settlement continue to reveal rooms of distinct purpose. Whether the features in I2 were linked to rarified or sacred activities or whether they were linked to large scale food preparation, it remains the case that the rooms of the settlement appear to be part of a single, multifunctional complex.