Our day began with an investigation of an EB site rumored to be present near the town of Vardenut, just south of our southern survey boundary. Ruben mentioned an early 20th century reference to an EB occupation there and asked us to investigate. Even though the site is likely locate within Kate Franklin's 2010 survey area (and possibly published in her dissertation), we walked the low hills to the west of and south of the village (toward Ara) village in order to search for a site higher than the Medieval site at the western village margin. Just SW of the Vardenut/Ara boundary, we came upon a soil cut out of which EB pottery was eroding. Above the cut, on top of the hill, we identified architecture with adjacent building foundations, largely rectilinear, between 25 and 180 and meters square each. At least three mounds were also located by the survey team, directly south of the hilltop architecture. A large bench/terrace below the hilltop also appeared to host potential architecture, rooms, and burials.
After our work at Vardenut, we moved to the Kuchak survey quadrant in order to escape the rain moving east-west across Aragats Village, Shenavan, etc. There, we worked four 1km EW transects between extending west form the M3 highway. These transects surrounded the site of Kuchak II and we were able to provide some context for this impressive EB/LB site. We will continue to do so over the next several days.
We identified a burial cluster SE of the fortress that appears to have been either looted or excavated. We are looking into whether this was Levon Petrosyan's past work. We also made numerous surface collections in the site vicinity.