Day 1, 7/2/2013
Today I worked a half-day at Tsaghkahovit, because I arrived in Yerevan at 4 a.m. Lori showed me the current trenches, WSDA1 (Kathryn), WSDA2 (Elizabeth H) and WSDB, which is my trench. WSDB appears to have a passageway running between the E and W corners, with a closed entrance on the SE side, and a strange jumble of rocks on the NW and SW sides. At the NW edge of the trench (which was dug for 4 days before my arrival), we reached clayey earth today, which led us to think about stopping work without using the screen. Locus 7, the shovel pass we took today (about the height of half of a shovel blade), is where the clayey earth started to appear, and we closed it after finishing the pass. There was a good deal of material – 2 bags of ceramics, 1 medium-sized bag of bone, and one small bag of obsidian. There were mixed LBA and Iron III ceramics evident; that, plus the dark, loamy earth we were digging, shows that we are still in a wash level. However, the appearance of the clay near the NW wall may mean we are nearing cultural levels.
Tomorrow, though, instead of working inside of the passage itself, we will either extend the trench, to make it 5 x 5 m, or we may end up trying to finish it in order to move on to a new trench altogether.