Our work today brought us back to the area of the Kuchak survey quadrant west of Kuchak village and near the planned, fenced preserve/forrest that is being assembled there. After beginning Transect 77 at the south end of our current 1km transect boundaries, the two westernmost transects (mine and Salpi's) encountered the fence. We decided to have all survey walkers enter the fenced area and complete all transect portions that would be within the preserve before exiting (in order to deal with the accessibility issues). However, it became clear that the area was both quite disturbed by recent activity and dangerous: numerous streamlets, springs/seeps, high grass, and tree-planting holes made the area nearly impossible to safely walk. We therefore wrote of the entire fenced area as disturbed and unsurveyable.
Before leaving the area, however, we groundtruthed a satellite point within the preserve area identified by Elizabeth... and recorded a 1 ha fortress with substantial standing architecture! The site consisted of several rectangular rooms arranged in an L-shape along a N-S running bench, with both a cyclopean enclosing wall and internal room divisions constructed at almost the same scale. The wall faces are well crafted enough to appear to date later than the Bronze Age, potentially, although they do not resemble the Medieval masonry encountered at Tsaghkaberd.
At the south eastern edge of the complex, a large curvilinear (semicircular) room opened to the southeast, just above what is either a recently produced terrace, or a narrow terrace associated with the site. An enclosing wall running from the southeast to the northwest may close the L.
After recording the site (Kuchaka Berd) we moved to the northern edge of our current transect boundaries in order to continue surverying and to delimit the preserve fence further, only to encounter rain, so we moved our activities south to the Aragats survey quadrant, where we identified roads for accessing the southern hilly portions of the survey area (from where we will reach the western kuchak quad reaches as well).