Darvazalik Cave has been testing our patience for the past three years. A 5-metre-deep excavation trench. A 50-minute climb to the cave every morning. Bears occasionally crossing the trail. And, somewhat unexpectedly, full internet access.
Fieldwork at Darvazalik has never been easy. Season after season, we continued excavating deeper, hoping to reach deposits that could take us back to the Middle Palaeolithic. As the trench grew deeper, however, so did the uncertainty. After several excavation seasons, we had almost lost hope. Then, on the very last day of this year’s field season, at 520 cm below the surface, we finally reached what we had been looking for: a Middle Palaeolithic layer containing charcoal, stone artefacts, and animal bones. The deposits are more than 60,000 years old.
It was a perfect reminder that archaeology is very often about patience and … of course… a considerable amount of hard work.
Reaching the layer is only the beginning. The next stage will take us from the cave to the laboratory, where we will document and analyse the finds and samples collected during excavation. The combination of lithic artefacts, faunal remains and charcoal offers an opportunity to reconstruct both human activity at the site and the environmental context in which it took place.
For now, after three years and more than five metres of excavation, Darvazalik has finally begun to reveal its Palaeolithic story. And now we are curious to see what it can tell us about the world of 60,000 years ago and the people who lived there.