First journal entry for the 2017 field season. I am co-directing the KVAS Project again this year with Ian Lindsay.
We began our day attempting to the prospective site of Aver Berd fortress, but Pickle wheel problems allowed us only to drive as far as Verivank, a Tukh Manuk chapel, also above the village. From the chapel we hiked north and west along the extant military road all the way to the fortress (passing a settlement and corral site that we documented on the way back down the mountain). Our surface collection, mostly of obsidian, spiked as we approached the fortress from the west.
Upon close inspection, we confirmed that the site was most certainly the cyclopean fortress known as Aver Berd and that it featured cyclopean masonry with massive wall fall, well crafted to articulate with the site's andesite bedrock. (Was it basalt architecture on an andesite hill?) The primary architectural components consist of two hemispherical walls on the east side, one positioned at the top of the hill like a citadel wall and the other positioned halfway down the hill as a terracing wall. At the southern end of the citadel, the wall terminates with into a bedrock outcrop in a beautiful corner. The western side of the site does not need fortification because it consists of a sheer drop into the valley below, framed by jagged outcrops. There is overgrown shrub oak and rose bushes throughout the site, low visibility, and no surface materials except for obsidian recovered from cuts in the eastern approach. We will return to map, drone, and photograph the site further.
Following our visit to Aver Berd we documented a small, indeterminate settlement just below and to the south, followed by a pastoral, corral complex halfway back on the road to Verivank. At Verivank, we lunched and recorded the site. Afterwards, we documented the Mkhei Vank monastery complex and cemetery to the east of Lusagyugh, as well as two historical cemeteries and the 19th century Surb Astvatsatsin church in town.
We then drove along the north-south road west of Lusagyugh that runs along the valley that proceeds below and west of Aver Berd. One surface collection featured a possible EB sherd there, in a road cut, and we now believe that there's a good chance for identifying an associated EB site on the hill directly north, and south of Aver Berd. We plan to investigate that hill tomorrow extensively, as well as the drainage lying directing to its west. We will then set out Ar/Lu systematic transects accordingly.