Session III: Taiga Archaeology

Dates: August 1-26, 2024

Fees: $4,250 USD

APPLICATION

Session full. Consider applying for another session, or join the waitlist.

Why are we doing this?

Several new archaeological sites, primarily lithic scatters, have been recorded by NOMAD Science in the high elevation Taiga that have the potential to help us understand how past people were utilizing these remote (even by Mongolian standards!) areas. In recent years, NOMAD Science has been working in the lower elevation areas of northern Mongolia’s Darkhad Depression, taking a landscape approach to model the seasonal movements and domestic activities of the region’s early inhabitants. Ethnographic observation suggests that interaction between low and high elevation areas in the region is common with goods and people moving in both directions. However, until recently, few archaeological sites had been discovered and examined in the high elevation “Taiga” due to intense logistical challenges and poor surface visibility. Additionally, recent archaeological expeditions have been organized to determine the feasibility of locating and recovering artifacts melting out of shrinking snow and ice patches in Mongolia’s high elevation taiga regions in northern and western Mongolia (Recent Ice Patch News). Finding and investigating new Taiga sites has the potential to contextualize the ice patch finds and provide a more complete picture of the land use strategies use by people inhabiting the lower elevation sites of the Darkhad Depression. The period of sites that may be investigated ranges widely from the paleolithic to recent historic times, though we will be focusing on Neolithic-Bronze Age sites. We will also be working with recent (<20 year old) sites and doing some test excavations at these sites to understand the archaeological processes in the region and among reindeer herders in the area. This ethnoarchaeological work has the potential to greatly impact the way we interpret more ancient archaeological sites.

Field Activities and Skills

The NOMAD Science team will be travelling by horse back into some very remote regions of Mongolia in order to reach the sites that we are interested in. Participants will map and collect artifacts from newly discovered sites, will conduct surveys to locate new archaeological sites, will work with local reindeer herder communities to share our archaeological findings and gain new ethnographic insights, will study and conduct excavations at recent reindeer campsites in order to better understand the cultural end depositional processes in the region, and will work to locate and record stone tool quarries. Skills that will be learned, practiced and mastered include: navigation, pedestrian survey, site recording, mapping (including GIS), basic excavation, drone photography, community interaction, and basic Mongolian archaeological grave and artifact typologies.

Intended Outcomes

The activities of this program will expand and improve existing settlement pattern models to include high elevation sites. Methodologies for locating and investigating these previously understudied and often unknown sites will be refined. Sources of commonly used resources (in particular stone tool raw materials) in high and low elevation sites will be discovered and recorded.

Description of camp life

The team will travel and move camp several times allowing us to explore many different regions. There will likely be no cell service for the duration of the project. Small solar panels will be used to power essential project equipment as needed. We will sleep in individual tents. Participants are expected to provide their own tent, sleeping bag and mat, but all cooking and eating gear will be provided. Low cost, generic gear may be rented from the project for an additional fee. Plumbing is non existent and so participants should expect to purify their own water from lakes and rivers. August typically has nice weather, though particularly at high altitudes, chilly nights and occasional storms should be expected.