After dropping Salpi off at Mirak this morning, we continued to work the rest of the day on Transects east of the fortress and sometimes within the modern village. There was a great deal of settlement architecture and modern burials to record, although few to no examples of ancient mortuary landscape.
The major finds here involved three separate settlement complexes: a likely Medieval settlement adjacent to the Mirak basilica, a Medieval or Modern settlement at the southern end of the contemporary village, and a possible set of Bronze or Iron Age rooms just below the northern Mirak cemetery. Both Medieval-Modern settlements are associated with separate cemeteries, just above each of them to the east. Both of these feature Yezidi mortuary architecture similar to that recorded to the east in Ria Taza: small tumuli, large mausoleums, slab/dolmen-like tombs with carved horses on top, and domed or "chest" shaped dolmens. The southern cemetery is particularly impressive with its too circular mausoleums or ossuaries, one which appears to have recently collapsed inward on its southern side. It is possibly 3 times larger than the comparable cemetery at Ria Taza. These sites could either represent multiple, sequential occupation phases of the village or, due to their spatial distinctions, separate simultaneous occupations.