28 June 2013
Weather in the morning was cool, sunny, with a clear sky. There were some clouds around the plain.
We started by evaluating rooms DA and DB, planning on doing 2 trenches in DA, with the possibility of a trench (or extension) in DB.
In order to include the entirety of the room (because it angles slightly), the final boundary of the excavation area was 12 m x 10 m, with a 1 m baulk between WSDA1 and WSDA2, making each area 10 m x 5.5 m. The corners of both trenches are at the cardinal directions. I will be supervising trench WSDA1 (the SW part of DA) and Elizabeth Hardy is excavating WSDA2 (the NE part of DA).
My workers are:
Sahag Tonoyan (who speaks the most Russian)
Gor Garapetyan (might be the oldest of the 4?)
Vartan Galstyan (the youngest)
Chamur Mgrtchyan (they called crazy frog)
There is a semi-circular apse to the SW of WSDA1, which may be connected to room DA, which we have left out of the excavation area for the moment. The entrance to DA seems to be in the NW wall, so extension in either direction might be interesting, in the future.
We plan on excavating only the area within the room walls, but we removed the sod from the top of the entire trench area.
We opened Locus 1 today, which is the surface layer (just the sod), after laying out the trenches with stakes and string. We began to remove the sod from the entirety of both trenches, leaving sod on the baulk, starting with the borders of each trench.
Before we removed any sod, Lori took pictures of both trenches from multiple directions.
WSDA1 datum 1 is on a rock at the N corner (just W of the corner).
WSDA1 datum 2 is on a rock at the E corner (about 1 m E of the corner).
Elevations:
N corner (from datum 1): -34.6 cm
W corner (from datum 1): -37 cm
Center (from datum 1): -66 cm
E corner (from datum 2): -26 cm
S corner (from datum 2): -41.6 cm
In the morning, we had only one shovel, so the team took turns digging out the sod, focusing on the border of the trench. Because work was so slow with one shovel, we suggested that they stagger lunch, but it appeared that they simply staggered lunch runs. We ended up taking a lunch break together. A second shovel appeared before lunch, but one of the shovels quickly broke.
The afternoon was intermittently cloudy, with rain nearby on the plain. It was also warmer.
In the afternoon, the border sod removal was completed and we removed the stakes and string. I mapped the unit, including some stones uncovered by the removal of the sod. Most of these were the continuation of previously visible stones, but there were at least 2 new stones in the N corner. We appear to have emerging walls on the NW, SE, and SW sides of the trench. There appears a possible doorway in the NW wall, entering into WSDB.