[Razor]

Pretty good first chapter. It is more of a setup chapter for the action to come, leaving us with a cliffhanger.

Couple things. I was reading this, but it never really "hooked" me. The last few paragraphs begin tickling my interest with your cliffhanger. Don't get me wrong, I've read books were it was slow at the beginning and I ended up absolutely loving it by the end, but it was rough those first few chapters before the story took off. If that's the route you want to take, fine by me. Just make sure you don't dilly-dally too long before giving the reader something to sink their teeth into.

Secondly, your synopsis is a little long. Make it like two or three sentences max. The smaller the better. Now if you are writing this for your brother and its for a writing assignment, maybe it has to be longer than that. Okay, understand, but I'd leave the longer synopsis for the teacher.

One more thing, is he driving through this village the whole time? What I mean is, is he driving to a dig site or is he lost inside of a huge dig site? I wasn't sure on that.

A quick breakdown,

Really liked the first two paragraphs, although like I said, I'm not completely sure where he is, but that can be after the first two. (Also, "rough wheels" bugged me a little. Wheels can be rough, but maybe "hard rubber wheels?")

His boots crushed the small chunks of dirt beneath him, and as he took a few steps forward, the noise of the small pebbles grinding together under the weight of his body began to sound loud enough to drown out any noise as it echoed through the empty dwellings that surrounded him and his vehicle.

That's a really long sentence with only one comma. I would suggest breaking this up into at least two sentences.

The buildings were centuries old and highly resembled the Pueblo Indians’ adobe style dwellings

"highly" and "style" aren't absolutely needed. You might even be able to knock off "dwellings." It will get the same message across without them. I do the same thing whenever I write. I put in unneeded words.

Evnlight told me this once and I think it describes what I do, anyways. He told me: "It feels like you are trying to hold the readers hand, and treat them like a child. It's okay to let the reader fill in gaps themselves, and not every reader has to see exactly the same thing as you."

The buildings were centuries old and highly resembled the Pueblo Indians’ adobe style dwellings, the way the houses were connected to the canyon wall, had no opening and closing doors, had simple square holes for windows, and were made completely from the stone that came from the canyons, but they were also different.

Another big sentence. I'd just slap a period after "adobe style dwellings." "They were like stone extensions of the canyon wall with open doorways and square holes for windows. The rock blocks came from the canyon itself, yet somehow they were different."

The books were in a never-before-seen language, there was a cemetery that had the answers to when this place was built, and through all the other amazing discoveries this wonderful new place had to offer, the group that found it last year began to DIG instead of explore.

Maybe reorder the words for a smoother read: language never-seen-before.

I would suggest trying something like 'despite all the amazing discoveries this wonderful place.' "through, other, new" I think can be replaced or taken out.

and have one of them take his place, becoming his ‘successor’

You say the same thing twice just two different ways. Take one out.

He slipped on a pair of white, elastic gloves from his pocket, as not to ruin anything,

We figured this out from the gloves. It kind of says the same thing.

I'll leave the rest to you, as I'm sure you are tired of me nit-picking already. IF you want I'll go through the rest, but I'd understand if you don't want me too.

One more thing:

Deciding to exercise a bit of prudence, he decided to wait around and see who it was.

Decide is used twice. Nothing major.

This really is a good story. I'm interested in the next chapter to see where you take this. Nice work.