Student, Faculty research in Mongolia
From staff reports
Issue date: 10/25/07 Section: The Scene
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For six weeks this past summer, Honors-in-Discipline student Taylor Burnham, an East Tennessee State University junior majoring in geology, experienced a rare opportunity, thanks to an ETSU Honors College summer fellowship of $2,500, in addition to smaller grants from the ETSU student Sierra Club and Geology Club.
Burnham joined ETSU faculty members Dr. Mick Whitelaw, an associate professor of Geology, and Dr. Richard Kortum, an associate professor of Philosophy and Humanities, along with Dr. Jerry Nave, a former ETSU faculty member in the surveying program, to conduct research in Mongolia.
Burnham, a resident of Mountain City, spent the majority of the time working with Whitelaw at Khoton Lake, in Bayan Olgii, a province located in far western Mongolia. They studied the geology of the area and located precisely, thanks to the surveying expertise of Nave, and described the petroglyphs created on three hills, called Biluut 1, 2 and 3, beside the lake - something that had never been accomplished.
"We flew to Beijing, and from there to Ulan Bataar in Mongolia," said Burnham. "The lake is in the westernmost part of the country - just a few kilometers from the Chinese border."
The ETSU visitors made the trip to the lake in two Russian-made jeeps and were joined by a cook and two drivers, one of whom was an area English teacher. Also joining the trek were Dr. Y. Tserendagva, an archeologist from the Mongolian Institute of Archeology, and David Edwards, a contract photographer for the National Geographic Society.
The researchers learned that artists spanning thousands of years, from the Paleolithic, Pre-Bronze, Bronze, Iron and Turkic eras, roughly 7,000 to 900 years ago, had created the pictures. The petroglyphs appear on any surface polished smooth by glacial activity. Burnham notes, "The pictures show animals grazing -especially ibex - and hunting scenes, with very few representations of humans." Some of the images are as much as six feet in height.
"There is a 13,000-foot-high mountain two miles across the lake. We hoped to investigate the petroglyphs there, but there wasn't enough time," Burnham said. Instead, the group documented some 1,600 images in one of three hills, with perhaps as many as 7,000 yet to be researched in the other two, which would make the area one of the richest petroglyph complexes in Central Asia.
Burnham joined ETSU faculty members Dr. Mick Whitelaw, an associate professor of Geology, and Dr. Richard Kortum, an associate professor of Philosophy and Humanities, along with Dr. Jerry Nave, a former ETSU faculty member in the surveying program, to conduct research in Mongolia.
Burnham, a resident of Mountain City, spent the majority of the time working with Whitelaw at Khoton Lake, in Bayan Olgii, a province located in far western Mongolia. They studied the geology of the area and located precisely, thanks to the surveying expertise of Nave, and described the petroglyphs created on three hills, called Biluut 1, 2 and 3, beside the lake - something that had never been accomplished.
"We flew to Beijing, and from there to Ulan Bataar in Mongolia," said Burnham. "The lake is in the westernmost part of the country - just a few kilometers from the Chinese border."
The ETSU visitors made the trip to the lake in two Russian-made jeeps and were joined by a cook and two drivers, one of whom was an area English teacher. Also joining the trek were Dr. Y. Tserendagva, an archeologist from the Mongolian Institute of Archeology, and David Edwards, a contract photographer for the National Geographic Society.
The researchers learned that artists spanning thousands of years, from the Paleolithic, Pre-Bronze, Bronze, Iron and Turkic eras, roughly 7,000 to 900 years ago, had created the pictures. The petroglyphs appear on any surface polished smooth by glacial activity. Burnham notes, "The pictures show animals grazing -especially ibex - and hunting scenes, with very few representations of humans." Some of the images are as much as six feet in height.
"There is a 13,000-foot-high mountain two miles across the lake. We hoped to investigate the petroglyphs there, but there wasn't enough time," Burnham said. Instead, the group documented some 1,600 images in one of three hills, with perhaps as many as 7,000 yet to be researched in the other two, which would make the area one of the richest petroglyph complexes in Central Asia.