Today we started by taking the SW quadrant down with shovels and removing the rocks covering the mound. The soil under the rocks in the SW quadrant is Locus 2. Thus, there will be no picture or drawing of the rocks covering the SW quadrant (this decision was made by Ruben), though there are pictures of what we cleaned yesterday. We also continued to clean the northern half of the kurgan. We decided to extend the trench another 0.5m to the east. As we came down in the SW quarter, it became clear that the area where rocks were missing was actually a deflated area, as the rocks became visible after we took the area down. It appears that there may have been two layers of stones (with soil in-between) in the area around the stone circle.
Ruben and I decided that the workers will continue working this afternoon and tomorrow (Sunday) – without our supervision – and extend the trench 1 m to the east and to the south, to fully expose the stone circle. The new dimensions of the operation are 12.5 m x 12.5 m.