Today our work focused on the north-south valley west of Lusagyugh called Tsaghki Dzor, with our primary interest being the identification of a potential EB settlement on the low hills (~2000m) at the valley's southern terminus. While no EB site was conclusively located, we did identify settlement foundations on the west side of the valley's stream and a group of obsidian scatters at its southeast entrance. The settlement architecture appeared to be largely on top of the ground surface, featuring both rectangular and curvilinear plans for 7 or 8 foundations. Heavy scrub oak growth created conditions of low visibility throughout our work here.
The southern hill that we had initially identified as a potential host for EB occupation featured similar berm and rockpile constructions to those found by Lindsay and Chazin during survey on the hill to the immediate west in 2014. These appear to be pastoral corral and clearing structures often located on the region's lower hilltops.
The artifact scatters on the hill's southwest slope suggest a prehistoric site of some size located there. We plan to return to Tsaghki Dzor soon to complete our extensive survey and perform aerial photography.
The rest of our day was spent attempting to identify the site listed in the Monuments Commission list as 2.51/4, without success. We will continue to looks for tumuli in the northern portion of Lusagyugh.
We then confirmed the Medieval/Modern cemetery recorded near Levon's 2015 Lusagyugh trench.
Tomorrow, we plan to spend the morning mapping and planning the excavations at Mirak. We will then return to the Lusagyugh quadrant to walk the drainage north of Levon's 2015 trench. If there are still no conclusive EB results, we may turn to thermal imaging in order to evaluate the presence of a site in the vicinity of the northwest quadrant regions.
We are seriously considering dumping our Ucomm cell service for Viva Cell, due to poor connection quality.