A Mongolian Anthropological Experience

I've been away from the group for a couple of weeks but finally found my way back to UB on the 2nd. My independent research project took me on a wild adventure hundreds of kilometers from UB with a group of 15 Mongolians. I left UB with one days notice and found myself piled into a massive truck thundering towards Kharkorum. I was sandwiched in the front of the truck with the driver and a graduate student, neither of which spoke much English and we all know y Mongolian is terrible. This made for a rather quiet drive. However, when we stopped for lunch the students were more willing to make an attempt at talking to me. My favorite was when one of the boys came up to me, extended his hand, and said "Let us meet!" His name was Erueka and it turned out that his English was very good. Between his translations and my pocket dictionary, communicating got easier and easier as the weeks progressed. At first I didn't put my dictionary down, but by the time we came back I was leaving the book in my tent for days and only referencing it for something particular. Slowly, my Mongolian improved too! I learned words that were important for the dig, such as: pot, rock, shovel, bucket, and brush.

As for the actual digging, this experience was everything I had hoped it would be. We worked on a site that was on top of a mountain and near several ovoos. One of the structures was a very large rock pile that was about 80 m in circumference. however, we were working on some of the subsidiary structures that surrounded this main one. We believed that the rock formations may have been burial markers. Sadly, I won't know if they were or not. After three days of digging, a few local herdsmen came to the site. They were very upset about us digging so close to the ovoos, and literally grabbed our shovels from our hands and threw them to the ground. The even picked up the newly uncovered rocks and threw and kicked them out of place. So much for keeping them "in situ!" Our Professor tried to talk to these men and even went to a town meeting to beg these people to let us stay. They wouldn't hear of it. So that night, we packed up camp and moved into a National Park to stay the night and try to figure out where we could go to finish our excavation... and by that I mean start a new one!

I was away for over two weeks so it may take more than one post to explain it all. Look for the rest of my adventure soon!

Love,
Amber