This is the second year of our three-year pilot project designed to identify the potential significance of the Quaternary sedimentary record of the upper catchment of the Kura river in northeastern Turkey. Our overall aim is to understand the evolution of the Kura catchment during the last 2.5 million years within the context of dramatic regional tectonic and climate-driven environmental changes. Specifically, we want to assess the importance of the Kura river valley as a potential migration pathway for early hominins from Asia into Europe. Based upon our earlier BIAA-funded research in western Turkey, we now believe the earliest securely-dated hominins in western Turkey arrived sometime around 1.2 million years ago (Maddy et al. in review; also Lebatard et al. 2014). However, it is likely that hominins roamed across the Kura catchment much earlier, especially as early hominins (H. erectus ergaster georgicus; see Lordkipanidze et al. 2013) arrived at Dminisi in Georgia around 1.8–1.6 million years ago (Gabunia et al. 2000). The timing of these early arrivals relies on finding hominin remains or artefacts within securely-dated sedimentary deposits. Establishing a reliable stratigraphy and chronology for the sedimentary and volcanic sequence in the Kura catchment will take many years, but this pilot study will inform our future work programme, allowing the targeting of key areas of interest, thus helping to make future research more efficient and effective. Our first field season identified a number of immediate areas of interest, and during our second visit we concentrated our efforts in one of these areas, focusing on surface mapping and the description of outcrops close to the village of Sevimli. Our initial work in this area, northwest of the village, identified the possible occurrence of three high-level river terraces buried beneath basaltic lava flows flanking the deeply incised (>140m) narrow modern valley. However, observations were limited to one surface exposure in the underlying sediments, restricting confirmation of a fluvial origin to only one of these terrace levels. We sampled the overlying basalts for Ar-Ar age estimation last year, but these samples are currently being analysed, with results due later this year. Significantly, however, the terrace sequence is cross-cut by a large NNE–SSW trending normal fault, downstream (east) of which the terraces appear vertically offset (downwards) by up to 80m relative to those upstream (west), suggesting substantial post-depositional fault movement along this fault. This fault is one of many similar trending faults to cut across this part of the Kura valley. These faults form part of a series of structures which transfer strike-slip motion from the Dursunlu fault system (which forms the western limit of the Ardahan basin) eastwards across to the large Kura fault system which extends northwards into Georgia. This strike slip motion is believed to be coeval with the onset of motion along the north Anatolian fault system and thus begins around 7 million years ago, which constrains a maximum age for the higher terrace sequence. It is likely, however, that these terraces are much younger, a question we should be able to answer once we receive the outcome of the Ar-Ar age estimation from these lavas. This year we focused on the area south of the Kura incised valley, where a small northward draining tributary has cut a small canyon, exposing, in places, the sediments beneath the overlying lava flows. Our field observations when combined with detailed survey of the outcrops, obtained using a Pentax total station, suggest the presence of up to six terraces above the level of the modern incised