The Archeology of Lost Affection

Usually, when Victor Mair is traipsing through the deserts and scrambling over the mountains of Eastern Central Asia, he is in search of Bronze Age and Iron Age Indo-Europeans (Tocharians, Scythians, Khotanese, Sogdians), medieval Turkic peoples (Uyghurs, Kyrgyz, Kazakhs), and late medieval Altaic groups (Khitans, Jurchens, Mongols).  In this book, he is seen investigating the traces of two contemporary, supposedly Sinitic speakers, but still very much as an archeolinguist.