Our survey work today focused on several portions of the Nigavan survey area south of Nigavan and west of Aparan. We began our day, however, with the groundtruthing of a kurgan cluster to the east of Nigavan village, between the M3 Highway and the Nigavan access road.
Our Pleiades satellite imagery suggested that a cluster of fairly large kurgans might be present close to the Nigavan access road that we have been using the last several days to reach our transects. We traversed a barley field north of the road where it crosses the Kasakh, confirmed the mounds as burials, and recorded the cluster as Nigavan BC 70. Most of them were positioned toward the top of a medium size barley field, and plowing has created a medium level of disturbance and disruption. The kurgans ranged between 5 and 10 meters in diameter and one featured perhaps a quarter of a visible boulder cromlech.
Our three transects for today (7-9) produced only minimal isolated burials and clusters, with a predominance of Soviet clearance features--a lot of boulder and earth walls and not many sites! With that portions of Aragats now complete, we can turn our attention to points north and east that should prove more archaeologically fruitful.