It is remarkably common in Paldea for archaeologists, seeking greater information on the Treasures of Ruin and the civilization they destroyed, to instead accidentally dig into a Maushold burrow. Yet while some of these burrows are in active use, many are not, and even active ones are often evacuated by these skittish pokemon in the presence of a full-blown excavation. As scholars write papers on even accidental discoveries, the stratigraphy of Maushold architecture in Paldea is nearly as well-understood as its human counterpart.
Maushold, despite going through many times more generations, do not exhibit the rapid changes in material culture typical of groups of humans; if anything, the difference from one age of Maushold burrow to the next reflects differences in the environmental constraints caused by both humans and other pokemon. It is actually possible to observe areas of human depopulation through the associated Maushold burrows, which become sparser and lack many of the typical furnishings, but also show generations worth of reuse, undisturbed as they were (at least until the present dig) by human activity.
Maushold quickly multiply to fill all available space and then some, and population booms and busts are well attested in the history of this species. This poses a particular problem for archaeologists, who must work with remarkable haste, for an excavated Maushold burrow is typically still a functional burrow. Once placed above ground and re-exposed to the local pokemon, sites are often reoccupied, even after intervals of thousands of years. For all that science zooms in on small differences in genetics and material culture, Maushold are in truth not all that different from their distant ancestors; perhaps humans would find similar phenomena even in Area Zero, were it not too dangerous to look.
