Today's work focused mostly on setting up of our first test trench at Mirak fortress and the [re]droning of the site for topo and architectural mapping.
We placed Mirak Operation 01 on the site's northwestern terrace, a broad grassy area just above the gorge. The 2x2 will target a stratigraphic column, as surface evidence for architecture is nonexistent. Salpi is working with the driver Gachik and 3 Aparan workers. We checked in throughout the day as we imaged Mirak from the air and surveyed nearby.
At the fortress, we installed our first set of control points before droning, in the interest of creating a rectified orthophotod-derived map in ArcMap. We will now work on creating a contour, topo-map of the site, followed by architectural tracing.
We also surveyed the Kasakh gorge today, from the entrance to Mirak Village 2/3 of the way north to Ria Taza, along the Korxjur branch of the river. We recorded one isolated burial, with a lot of pottery near the village, and a relatively large cromlech cluster (~15) along the gorge terrace southeast of Ria Taza. There is an excellent line of clusters materializing in the GIS west and east of the Halavar Reservoir.