This report details the archaeological and palaeoenvironmental work conducted in Govi-Altai, Mongolia, carried out by an international and interdisciplinary team led by the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History and the National Museum of Mongolia. The fielwork took place from 6 August – 16 September 2018. The project aimed to examine the interaction between environment and human demography across large time spans in this sensitive environment. In particular, during the Late Pleistocene when the entire world, underwent large climatic fluctuations from the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM). The large amount of environmental change and tectonics have had a large effect on the past geomorphology of Govi-Altai, so much, so that modern Mongolia is completely different to its pre-LGM forms. In addition, deflation has large impacts on the formation of archaeological sites, and prevents deposition of artefacts, that make chronology, stratigraphy, and context difficult to study. Therefore, this project sought to find caves that might trap sediment layers and prevent deflation, which could provide us with stratigraphic units with archaeological material. This would provide better contextual information for the cultural and demographic change of Mongolia across the Late Pleistocene and Holocene. We obtained permits to excavate at four cave regions in collaboration with the National Museum. In the end, five caves, of the 24 identified in these four regions, were test excavated
