Today was a hot one. Amidst the clear skies and under direct exposure to the sun the KVAS Crew finished its work in the Ar/Ni landscape (specifically, the southeastern edge of this survey quadrant.
In the morning, we showed Captain Ian the hill from yesterday's transect that featured the Soviet era geodesic mapping station. After closely inspecting the architecture, terrace spaces, and shaped stone features, the site was designated as Nigaberd 7.
We also once again visited the aforementioned "road to nowhere" in the southern portion of the survey quadrant. We recorded a possible continuation uphill and west of what we previously designated as its end (Ar/Ni.AG15.62).
After this we walked transects in the SE portion of the survey quad. Site and feature densities were considerably lower here. We did, however, record a decent amount of apparent ridge-top architecture along with a few burial clusters. This included two new fortresses (Nigaberd 08 and 09). The layout and rationale of the architecture here still requires considerable thought. We have faced the day to day quandary of distinguishing outcrop with cleavage from worked outcrop (that constitutes the walls of a fortress). While I feel confident that today's settlements were in fact "real," this has been a topic of considerable debate and is worth mentioning. I believe that in today's transects, we were more skeptical about that which we designated "isolated architecture." Wall traces appeared to be fairly clear.