Today we started by going down another 15 cm in the NW quadrant and cleaning around the rocks of the cromlech and the western chamber. Lilit drew the N-S section and started drawing the cromlech and chamber. In the area north of the capstones of the western chamber, a third capstone as well as eroding granite (possibly bedrock?) became visible.
After cleaning the section, it became clear that there are two courses of stones visible in the southern half of the section, which is where the area of clay extends to as well. The clay is quite thick in some place (approx. 20 cm) and is quite visible in the section.
Towards the end of the day, after photographing the large stones floating above the clay layer, we began to remove the rocks and pedestal using shovels. Below the second course of stones we encountered human remains. Luckily, the shoveling only disturbed part of the burial, the rest of it we were able to trowel around, photograph, and remove. Unfortunately, given the late hour we were unable to make a drawing of the remains before removing, because they were in a very fragile state and could not be left in place. Also unfortunately, no screen was available, so the soil was not screened. See the Locus 6 place form for a complete description of the burial.
The question is whether (or in what sense?) is this burial intrusive to the kurgan construction. The way the stones covering the burial were floating in the matrix implies that it was dug into the earthen mound after it was created. Yet, the fact that the burial was resting on top of the clay layer seems to indicate some knowledge of the kurgan’s construction. Similarly, there was no visible different in the soils indicating a cut/pit. Furthermore, the top stone over the burial was surrounded by other stones covering the top of the mound. There was no obvious gap in the stones covering the mound.