This second field day of 2016 was just as rainy as the first, although we were able to escape the wetness by heading to the UAZ after he completion of our first post-lunch transect, as the rains were moving north along the western slope of Aragats. In general the weather has been cold and wet.
Our morning was spend aquainting Adam and Ruben with the Nigaberd 4, the Road to Nowhere, and. It was not possible to visit the southern portion of the Road to Nowhere and Nigaberd 9 as wet roads, clogged with mud, were impassable. Adam and Ruben did not find much convincing about the sites as presented today, but they did encourage testing to as to confirm and/or dispense with the various extant hypotheses (e.g., canals, roads, fortifications, etc.). We will be programmatically reviewing the sites entered in 2016 in order to cull hasty and/or incorrect inclusions and attributions.
In the afternoon we completed Transect 1, begun yesterday afternoon, as a "training" transect: I was paired upon my line with Karen, while Salpi paired up with Shujing on hers. In general, the upland portions of the transect produced limited burials, a couple clusters, and several pieces of isolated architecture, including a small "house," which consisted of the foundations of two rectalinear rooms. The downslope portion of the transect, closer to the Kasakh, consisted of plowed fields lush with fodder growth, where visibility and features were almost zero.
Training went well and Karen seems more confident in his work with Collector in the field. Tomorrow we will continue walking W-E between the Tsaghkahovit Plain easting boundary and last year's Nigavan quadrant western boundary.