page_title: Baikal Archaeology Project
section_title: Fieldwork and field schools
hierarchical_section_title: Baikal Archaeology Project / Fieldwork and field schools
caption_attribution_description: English: Habitation and archaeological sites from the Lake Baikal region plotted on a NASA ASTER GDEM
context_page_description: The Baikal Archaeology Project is an international team of scholars investigating Middle Holocene hunter-gatherers of the Lake Baikal region of Siberia, Russia. The Project focuses on long-term patterns of culture change in the context of dynamic interactions with the environment. The Baikal Archaeology Project is based at the University of Alberta with Irkutsk State University being its main research partner on the Russian side. Other institutional collaborators of the project have included the University of Calgary, University of Saskatchewan, Grant MacEwan University, British Columbia Institute of Technology, University of Pennsylvania, University of California-Davis, Cambridge University, Oxford University, University College London, University of Aberdeen, and Institutes of Geochemistry and Earth’s Crust, Russian Academy of Sciences in Irkutsk and Irkutsk State Technical University in Russia. The Baikal Archaeology Project has been extensively funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
context_section_description: Researchers of the Archaeology, Paleoenvironment, and Ethnoarchaeology modules have conducted intensive fieldwork in many locations around Lake Baikal. Archaeologists excavated the cemeteries of Shamanka, Khuzhir-Nuge XIV, and Kurma XI, all located on the shores of Lake Baikal. This work expanded the existing collection of Middle Holocene burials in the region by c. 300 individuals, thus creating new research opportunities. Excavations were also carried out at the stratified habitation sites of Gorelyi Les in the Angara valley and Sagan-Zaba and Bugul’deika coves on Lake Baikal, providing archaeological data covering the entire Holocene. In conjunction with these excavations, the Baikal Archaeology Project organized archaeological field schools which attracted participants from Russia, Canada, USA, United Kingdom, and Poland.
  Cemeteries
  K14: Khuzhir-Nuge XIV
  KUR: Kurma XI
  LOK: Lokomotiv
  UID: Ust'-Ida
  SHA: ShamankaII
  Habitation Sites
  BUG: Bugul'deika
  GL: Gorelyi Les
  S-Z: Sagan-Zaba
   The Paleonvironment module conducted fieldwork at numerous locations around Lake Baikal including its western shores (lakes Shara and Khall), the valleys of the Lena (Basovo), Selenga (Burdukovo), and Kirenga (Krasnyi Yar) rivers, the Tunka Valley (lake Arky) west of Baikal, and northern Mongolia.  This work involved detailed examination of Holocene lake core records (pollen, diatom and macrofossils) and stratified floodplain sediments for high resolution paleoenvironmental reconstructions.
  The Ethnoarchaeology module organized field research with Evenki and Sakha hunters and reindeer herders at sites in the Bodaibo District (Irkutsk oblast’), Zhuia River Valley, Severobaikalsk District (Buriat Republic), and villages of Essei and Olenok.  This fieldwork is designed to provide the Baikal Archaeology Project with modern examples of subsistence action in specific lacustrian and riverine landscapes, characteristic also of the Middle Holocene hunter-gatherer groups.
caption: Map of the Baikal region with location of archaeological fieldwork sites.
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