Today was the survey team's second day at Mirak, where we have been helping Salpi finish Operation 02, bringing the majority of the trench down to bedrock, save the pedestaled upper wall in trench West. Tomorrow, we plan to head to Mirak with Lilit as well, so she can begin drawing Op--we will likely complete the excavating the trench in the morning.
I trained Arsho a bit on the GNSS instrument in the morning, seeing up the instrument with him and taking him to record Mirak GCPs 04 and 05. We also continue to adjust the settings to our satisfaction, but have yet to figure out how to turn off auto point collection.
We spent most of our day descending in the clay and bedrock floor of the OP02 room interior, rather quickly coming down on bedrock and sterile soil. We also worked extensively on the northwestern room "exterior," exposing the bedrock form as it slopes southwards towards the probable LB wall. Getting the wall to contact the northern bedrock was key to reaching the end of excavation in OP02. in trench west, the base of excavation is very deep, still not completely down on bedrock, but completely sterile. That half of the trench also hosts an enormous pedestal for the NS, single-course surface wall (or likely wall).
By the end of the day, we had reached the base of the excavation in the eastern room interior, but were still descending in the west where the wall turn/corner continues to descend and where we exposed a "jog" in the wall line, a jog to the west. Directly south of the jog there was a deeper and darker matrix with artifacts, suggesting either (1) a pit or (2) a western point in the trench where the LB occupation has been cut by a later one.