After a very rainy overnight, AB4 dried out throughout the day--despite threatening clouds--and much progress was made in our LB room descent. Lilit Ter-Minasyan was also at Aragatsi Berd today and began drawing the operation architecture.
In locus 51 we photographed the bottom of our descent from yesterday's rain-shortened activity and opened locus 55--the wall fall and living surface leveling stones positioned in and on top of western locus 51. Additional groundstone tools were recovered from here, a spike of small finds that has maintained over several days as we work on and around the LB room floor.
Work in locus 55 also revealed and confirmed a bedrock plunge below a line of flattening stones that then terminates in a pit that will likely be termed Pit 403. Two layers of paving stones overlay this pit, as well as the western half of pit 401. On top of the stones, was a thick layer of burned, ashy, but light, matrix. We removed the upper layer from Pit 403 today as locus 56. A stone tool and an astragalus were immediately visible as we cleaned the underlying silty deposits.
The remainder of Pit 401 is being simultaneously removed as locus 54. From above, a single bench/ridge of bedrock appears to separate the pits, just like the one that separates pits 401 and 402.
Work in loci 52 and 53 has been slowed by our focus in the LB room, floor, etc., but as we move to focus solely on pits 401 and 403, we intend to bring these down to bedrock as well by season's end.