Bringing the total station to Aragatsi Berd today marked the beginning of our 2014 mapping activities. We practiced setting up the unit, found all of our benchmarks, and painted them red for landscape visibility. Communication issues prevented new data collection, but we will try again tomorrow. Instead we walked, counted, and measured all of the second terrace "room" spaces on the eastern, southern, and western sides of the hill, a total of a least 11 delimited areas measuring at least 1,1000 meters square.
With locus 15 coming down on two different color and texture layers at its base, we decided to stop excavation there and remove the NE trench corner to match the locus 15 base elevation. This material was removed as loci 19-21 (LB cultural fill, LB floor, and EB fill, respectively). Locus 22 was then opened in the eastern portion of former locus 15, the NE corner of the operation, where the matrix is darker and siltier, with smaller andesite pebbles. Material is all EB at present.
Work continued in locus 16, where a black lens was exposed at locus north (also visible in the north trench wall) and a potential piece of [EB] architecture in locus south. This potential wall crosses the SE trench corner diagonally. We are cleaning the locus eastwards from the beginning of the black lens (where is intersects with bedrock from [LB] pit 402.
Today also marked the completion of locus 18, as all remaining stones were removed and bedrock well cleaned to the operation base. This bedrock curves upwards at mid trench, but it remains unclear whether it continues far into trench east. Material frequencies were very low here. In the related locus 17 region, we continued to clean rocks and remove earth, resulting in two interesting situations: (1) a mini vessel sherd and set of C14 samples in locus west, against the pit 402 bedrock, and (2) the uncovering of several potential LB stone tools in locus center, between the rock lines (at least one mano).