Today, July 3rd, we continued excavations at Kurgn 2. I mainly worked in the western chamber. I left the western part of the chamber with human remains covered and worked in the eastern part. The broken black vessel that may also include stand is partially on top of a walnust shaped balck vessel. Next to this is a small cup (broken) on its side and facing north east. There were medium mammal bones on top of the walnut vessel that may have been the ribs of a sheep. Nearby is the femur of another medium mammal - this may be on the floor, but has not been completely excavated own. I then switched to excavating in the central chamber to relieve Levon and Hannh contined to work in the western chamber. She cleaned to the floor or next matrix in the eastern part. This matrix is a loose yellow orange sandy silt matrix that is much easier to excavate than the ark brown clay matrix of the "fill" that was quite shot through with white mold.
In the central chamber, Levon spent much of the day cleaning around the skeleton and I helped for about 2 hours. The skull is still mostly together insitu, but has cracks through out it. The other bones, while clearly visible are not in grea shape and have been weathered. The cortical bone has thinned the outer table is flaking or peeling off so that most bones only have some coritcal and mostly spongy bone. The matrix has some clay and is wet (as is the newly exposed bone), consequently bone easily breaks and flakes off into small pieces.The hands and feet while visible have not been faring well in the excavation process with the carpals and metacarpals breaking and losing bone. I took several photos on HC's camera of how it looks now. The one course of (wall? fall?) appears to bon top o fthe person.They also found cow vertebrae above in the north at a higher level.