Today we continued to excavate the SW quadrant of the kurgan mound. Very few materials are coming out of the mound (Locus 2). In the N-S section of the quadrant, rocks are only visible at the top of the section. The dirt underneath is very clean, but it slightly lighter in color than the topsoil (medium vs. dark brown). The rock layer covering the mound is deeper/more robust near the stone circle than towards the center. Coming down, we hit large rocks in around the center of the quadrant, and below those rocks, at the center of the quadrant, we hit a rock covered in clay at a lower level inside those rocks.
We also continued to clean the stone circle around the kurgan. A few pieces of charcoal appeared next to the eastern part of the stone circle (5.25 m north of the SE corner of the trench and 30 cm from the baulk).
We laid out the trench boundaries for Kurgan 3, which will begin removing topsoil from tomorrow. Kurgan 3 is to the east of Kurgan 1 and the NE of Kurgan 2. It appears to be slightly smaller (approx. 8 m in diameter). The operation measures 11.5 m N-S and 10 m E-W. The photoboard in the photos I took of the north side of the kurgan mistakenly says the south side.