COLLABORATORY TEAM CONDUCTS FIELDWORK IN MONGOLIA

Eight individuals smile and hold up a University of Michigan "Block M" flag; steppe and mountains in the distance.

At the heart of the Centering the Northern Realms Project Grant is a search for patterns in fragmentary source materials—including textual and archaeological sources—to build a more accurate narrative of past behaviors. In summer 2022, team members traveled to northern Mongolia for fieldwork involving excavations, conservation, and ethnographic interviews.

A Mongolian Ger and livestock photographed from base camp.
The international crew of researchers and students on the excavation.

U-M faculty and students worked alongside Mongolian researchers and students from the Institute of Archaeology, Mongolian National Academy of Sciences to excavate and survey the Dood Tsakhir cemetery site—an ongoing excavation. They aimed to foster collaborations and build stronger reciprocal relationships with local researchers and with communities in Khövsgöl province.

The team’s Collaboratory research “challenges existing descriptions of the northern people of the forest as minor participants in the Mongol Empire… Northern communities were highly influential in networks of exchange, bearing clothing of imported silk and fur, while wearing jeweled rings and gold ornaments.”

Year 1 PI Alicia Ventresca-Miller (Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Assistant Curator of Asian Archaeology) (pictured, far left) shares some of her stunning photos and more details from the fieldwork with us here.


How many travelers from U-M went with you to Mongolia? Tell us about home base and who else was there.

This summer we had a huge crew of 63 individuals from across the globe. Our team from U-M included 9 undergraduate students and a graduate instructor for the field school. Northern Realms team member Bryan Miller joined us on the excavation. Our base camp was located a three day drive from Ulaanbaatar. It was quite remote and most of the crew camped in tents for 5 weeks or more.

A carved bone surface artifact pictured dates to the Mongol era.

What were your goals for the fieldwork?

The goal was to excavate Medieval era tombs that were previously looted. We collected objects and human remains from the surface and then continued to excavate the burials. We conserved what we recovered, including silk clothing, leather shoes, bows, and birchbark items.

Team member Kimberly Sanchez, a PhD candidate in Anthropology, also engaged in ethnographic fieldwork in Khövsgöl province this summer. She collected information on cheese making, and brought back cheese molds and equipment to create an ethnographic collection from Mongolia to be housed at the UMMAA.

The team is also studying pastoral lifeways and dairy production, including cheese-making.

What happens to the archaeological materials uncovered at the burial site where you worked?

The cemeteries have been looted in the past and we worked hard to conserve the objects that we recovered. We photographed and cataloged all of the burial goods. Samples of the human remains were collected for genetic, isotopic, and proteomic analyses. The archaeological materials stay in Mongolia and are housed at the Institute of Archaeology and the newly opened Chinggis Khan Museum.

A ceramic sherd from the site of a Mongol era settlement.
Vista of steppe and mountain foothills in Khövsgöl province, northern Mongolia.

You have more fieldwork planned in 2023. What are your hopes for next summer?

Next summer we plan on returning to Mongolia to spend time in the archives searching for textual sources. We also are taking a small team to continue excavations of looted burials and to begin excavation of a settlement site that is under threat of erosion.