Thanks Roger for the detailed description. We can dig with trowels through the loess and the mudbrick, although for the mudbrick we prefer some nice archaeologist’s picks. I really appreciate your insights.

And Veronica, we work under the direction of the A.H. Margulan Institute of Archaeology, Kazakh Academy of Sciences where Baurzhan A. Baytanaev is the General Director

Hope you keep reading. Soon our colleague Michael D. Frachetti who works on Bronze Age sites in the Dzhunghari Alatau will also be writing about his fieldwork!

We have very little loess in California. I’ve worked in the stuff (Hell Gap eastern Wyoming) but that material was more of a loose silt. I helped dig a 28 foot deep hand auger hole in it. In California the deepest auger I have ever excavated might have been a meter…too much rock or heavy mud. I live on adobe and in summer I’ve had to use a jackhammer to excavate it. I worked in Tucson in 1978 (NPS Western Archaeological Center). My only experience in the Southwest. Lots of GB experience working along pluvial lake shores. Love working in the desert. What’s your soil like? Hard or soft? Looks pretty hard…. We could dig Hell Gap with a trowel. In fact George Frison wouldn’t permit using anything but trowels. There were shovels for back filling.

Must be pretty cool to work in the same place for years and years. I might work in different parts of the state from week to week and rarely work in the same place for more then few weeks. This does provide perspective but still, there are places I’ve worked that merit a lengthy look that never occurs at least by me.