Got a lot done today. Started in the morning with removing the leftover soil from Locus 14, which sits above the floor in WSAC3. We cleaned this area in the morning and I photographed the surface of the locus even though we had not really reached all of the floor yet, in order to document a large rock sitting on dark soil and two smaller stones that needed to be broken and removed, which the guys did after the first perecor. There is an interesting arrangement of stones emerging in the eastern corner (roughly the center of room WSAC), involving a large, flat stone in a trapezoidal shape with several small stones surrounding it forming a relatively circular shape; one looks to be a mortar reused in this feature. A really interesting sherd came from this area with raised applique decoration in what look like chevrons but with one more rounded; also an obsidian blade. After we broke the rock along the SE baulk (see notes) we took another 5-10 cm off the area near the NE baulk and came down on some stones of the paved floor extending from WSAC2, as well as a confusing mixture of hardpacked clays and looser pockets of soil in colors ranging from black to bright yellow and white. There are some areas with what looks like ash near the stones of the circular feature, and some irregular shapes of clay surrounding looser organic pockets, and I believe that in one area I have reached the floor context which is a very hardpacked, grayish matrix with specks of white clay, charcoal, and orange clay. It might be possible that a lower level of the paved floor was covered with a clay-type material (Lori has comparanda), but I'm not sure yet. Looking at the NE baulk I cannot yet see a floor lens. We also came across two sherds of a reddish color lying flat on this surface, but I decided to cover this area and focus for time's sake on taking down the rest of the trench to the floor and to worry about the floor in a couple days.
Opened Locus 15 today as the top of the SW wall which was never cleaned for Lilit to draw, and had young-Gagik start taking the grass/weeds out between the stones of the wall.
Declared Locus 16 the paved floor in WSAC3 (so similar to Locus 24 in WSAC2) but did not take elevations or materials yet as we haven't even begun to define the stones yet.
After lunch we opened Locus 17 and 18 as a small roughly 2 by 2 m area to the SW of Locus 14 and between the ramp and the SE edge and the large jumble of rocks to the SW, in order to take this soil to the floor level. We finished removing the upper level of dark loamy overburden in about an hour, cleaning between some of the stones, then opened Locus 18 and screened that material as it is the same as Locus 14 and sits above the paved floor. We came down on several stones of the paved floor, and cleaning under the very large boulder which sits about 1.2 m from the Se edge its possible that this stone actually sits on the floor and is not floating, more reason to take its alignment with the two stones to the NW as intentional and not fall. However I'm not sure about the stones in the jumble near the SW wall, which might be fall but which also might be some sort of feature on the floor (burial? fixed feature i.e. table?). I had the guys start troweling around these stones at the end of the day but we need to finish this tomorrow.