A very eventful day today at Aragatsi Berd as we reach the LB room floor in trench west, recovered an interesting and unique LB clay object from said floor, removed all of the wall fall pedestals above the floor, and began to approach bedrock across much of the southern operation extension.
In trench west, within the confines of the LB room, we brought locus 44 to the same level at the base of locus 42 and made a test pass (starting locus 46) adjacent to wall locus 45, hitting bedrock across the south west trench corner and recovering a "four-legged" or "star-shaped" ceramic object--an oxidized and perforated artifact with four appendages and a single bump or "head."
Seeing that we were sitting close above the floor, we took 3 soil samples across the western portion of locus 46 and then moved to remove all of the wall fall and pedestal matrix from trench center (loci 49 and 40). This took most of the rest of the day, but enabled us to take 5 additional samples across the rest of the LB room by day end (a total of 8, gridded soil samples). The preserved and open room portion under excavation measures approximately 2.5m square. It remains to be seen if the floor is level across the entire area of locus 46, or if it has a slightly higher elevation upslope than downslope, perhaps accommodating the pit and pavement feature that we assume is located at trench center (from 2008).
In the southern trench extension, we split the locus 43 area into a locus west (47) and east (48) of the locus 4 wall. In locus 48, bedrock was soon revealed, supporting an additional wall construction of small stones at the immediate operation edge. This bedrock continues north and under the locus 4 wall. In locus 48, downward progress continues in a much lighter-colored and clayey matrix, containing higher material densities (moderate as opposed to low). Here we continue to define stones and or remove fill.