Day 3, 7/4/2013
We continued with a team of 3 (Artur Michaelyan, Hayk, Ara) in WSDE, and first we finished removing the topsoil with the attached greenery. I kept Locus 1 open, because there had been some material found in the topsoil, and the soil itself did not change. So the next shovel pass of approximately 15 cm, which went from west to east, was also Locus 1. After that first pass, we took the eastern half of the locus (which comprised the entire 3 x 5.5 m trench) down another 10-15 cm, where the soil remained the same.
In the process of this work, we uncovered a few larger stones near the N corner that had been invisible from above, and they looked intriguingly like a double row that might be a wall. Sadly, after I closed Locus 1 and opened Locus 2 to the west of this seeming double row, we discovered that the line that appeared to run along the NE baulk was floating. We took Locus 2 down piece by piece for most of the morning and into the afternoon, when rain was threatening, so we were trying to work piecemeal in order to keep on top of the loose soil in case the rain started in earnest. But in the process of working in Locus 2, we made the trench rather uneven, and to no purpose – other than to assess that the rocks along the east baulk were floating.
In the mid-afternoon, we re-evaluated the gameplan and created a Locus 3 situated in the E corner of the trench. We wanted to capture what was left of the stones (that is, the ones that didn’t yet appear to be floating) from the south and see if we had possibly the curved continuation of the outside of two lines of stones along the SE baulk of WSDA1. We began this work and will continue it tomorrow. Locus 2 is still open, also, because of the uneven nature of the trench. I hope we have time to clean it up a little.
But in the end, if the N corner is also unproductive, we may switch efforts over to WSDB’s extension.