By Anthea Vella, Master of Archaeology and Heritage Management student
This semester I chose to take the Directed Study in Cultural Heritage (ARCH 8403) topic, and this will be the first of four blog posts which are a requirement of it.
Over the course of the semester I will be conducting an analysis of the data gathered from a geophysical investigation in Northern Mongolia. My industry partner and supervisor, Dr Ian Moffat, recently took a trip to Soyo, Mongolia, where he and a skilled team conducted this investigation. The components of this investigation were multidisciplinary and incorporated geophysical, archaeological and geological techniques. These techniques ranged from GPR, static GPS, kite photography, soil identification, and the excavation of test pits. For my directed study I will be analysing and interpreting the collected data for unit six, which was one of eight test pits excavated.
Figure 1. Soyo, Northern Mongolia (Courtesy of Dr Ian Moffat 2016)
The archaeological site of Soyo is located in the Darkhad Depression of northern Mongolia, over 1000 kilometres (approximately) from the capital, Ulaanbaatar. Located at the intersection of the dense forest taiga and the grass steppe-land of the basin, Soyo is uniquely positioned to facilitate interaction between hunting and herding practices. This geophysical investigation and directed study will begin to provide the geophysical and archaeological evidence of this interaction.
The main goal of this directed study will be to map the subsurface features of this site and overlay these results on a high resolution aerial photograph, which was collected in the field. This “digital excavation” will be compared to the excavation of unit six, which will provide direct correlation between the different methods of data collection.
Personally, I am so excited and thrilled to be a part of this project and I cannot wait to make my way through the copious amount of data. Special thanks to Dr Ian Moffat and Dr Julia Clark, American Centre for Mongolian Studies, for involving me in this project.