The Multi-Period Settlement Dali in Southeastern Kazakhstan: Bronze Age Institutional Dynamics along the Inner Asian Mountain Corridor`

Archaeological excavations at the Dali site complex located in southeastern Kazakhstan provide a rich picture of Bronze Age life spanning from the early third to late second millennia B.C. Nearly ten years of research at the site have produced an abundant assemblage of architectural remains, ritual and burial contexts, human and animal ancient DNA, and evidence for related economic practices and other material forms (ceramics, metallurgy). A systematic radiocarbon dating program provides detailed chronological context for the numerous stratigraphically documented phases of occupation, burial, and economy at the site. The settlement contexts at Dali provide some of the most varied and well-dated material assemblages known in the region and help illustrate how local pastoralist societies developed traditions of architecture, ceramic production, herd management, and ritual in the Early Bronze Age, while innovating and incorporating novel craft techniques, economic strategies, burial styles, and settlement construction in the Middle and Late Bronze Age. Taken together, the archaeological data from Dali allow for a detailed reconstruction of the local practices and regional interactions that engaged agro-pastoralist communities within diverse, shared institutional domains across the Inner Asian Mountain Corridor and beyond over a span of more than 2000 years

Early integration of pastoralism and millet cultivation in Bronze Age Eurasia

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2019.1273Mobile pastoralists are thought to have facilitated the first trans-Eurasian dispersals of domesticated plants during the Early Bronze Age (ca 2500–2300 BC). Problematically, the earliest seeds of wheat, barley and millet in Inner Asia were recovered from human mortuary contexts and do not inform on local cultivation or subsistence use, while contemporaneous evidence for the use and management of domesticated livestock in the region remains ambiguous. We analysed mitochondrial DNA and multi-stable isotopic ratios (δ13C, δ15N and δ18O) of faunal remains from key pastoralist sites in the Dzhungar Mountains of southeastern Kazakhstan. At ca 2700 BC, Near Eastern domesticated sheep and goat were present at the settlement of Dali, which were also winter foddered with the region's earliest cultivated millet spreading from its centre of domestication in northern China. In the following centuries, millet cultivation and caprine management became increasingly intertwined at the nearby site of Begash. Cattle, on the other hand, received low levels of millet fodder at the sites for millennia. By primarily examining livestock dietary intake, this study reveals that the initial transmission of millet across the mountains of Inner Asia coincided with a substantial connection between pastoralism and plant cultivation, suggesting that pastoralist livestock herding was integral for the westward dispersal of millet from farming societies in China

Multiregional Emergence of Mobile Pastoralism and Nonuniform Institutional Complexity across Eurasia

In this article I present a new archaeological synthesis concerning the earliest formation of mobile pastoralist economies across central Eurasia. I argue that Eurasian steppe pastoralism developed along distinct local trajectories in the western, central, and (south)eastern steppe, sparking the development of regional networks of interaction in the late fourth and third millennia BC. The “Inner Asian Mountain Corridor” exemplifies the relationship between such incipient regional networks and the process of economic change in the eastern steppe territory. The diverse regional innovations, technologies, and ideologies evident across Eurasia in the mid-third millennium BC are cast as the building blocks of a unique political economy shaped by “nonuniform” institutional alignments among steppe populations throughout the second millennium BC. This theoretical model illustrates how regional channels of interaction between distinct societies positioned Eurasian mobile pastoralists as key players in wide-scale institutional developments among traditionally conceived “core” civilizations while also enabling them to remain strategically independent and small-scale in terms of their own sociopolitical organization. The development of nonuniform institutional complexity among Eurasian pastoralists demonstrates a unique political and economic structure applicable to societies whose variable political and territorial scales are inconsistent with commonly understood evolutionary or corporate sociopolitical typologies such as chiefdoms, states, or empires

Risultati preliminari delle indagini archeologiche ed etnografiche presso il sito di Togolok 1

Modern Turkmenistan is mainly constituted by a desert landscape, yet despite its harsh climate, cultures have been able to construct networks of water channels since the Bronze Age. This has resulted in a man-made landscape that integrates towns and villages. Extensive surveys and recent archaeological excavations have highlighted that between 2400 and 2100 BC (Namazga V period), the region of the Murghab alluvial fan was characterised by the development of complex urban societies. However, starting from the Late Bronze Age, a new group of mobile pastoralists appeared in the Murghab region and settled along the edges of the sedentary sites. Although their presence is well-attested both by survey and excavation data, their degree of interaction with the sedentary farmers is still debated. In modern Turkmenistan, semi-mobile shepherds continue to drive their cattle across the Murghab, using mobile camps for different months. This paper presents the preliminary results of the excavation of the sedentary site of Togolok 1, as well as the first ethnographic study of the mobile communities of the Murghab region

Migration Concepts in Central Eurasian Archaeology

Theories of migration hold a pervasive position in prehistoric archaeology of Central Eurasia. International research on Eurasia today reflects the juxtaposition of archaeological theory and practice from distinct epistemological traditions, and migration is at the crux of current debates. Migration was employed paradigmatically during the Soviet era to explain the geography and materiality of prehistoric ethnogenesis, whereas in the west it was harshly criticized in prehistoric applications, especially in the 1970s. Since the dissolution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), migration has resurfaced as an important, yet polemical, explanation in both academic arenas. Short- and long-distance population movements are seen as fundamental mechanisms for the formation and distribution of regional archaeological cultures from the Paleolithic to historical periods and as a primary social response to environmental, demographic, and political pressures. Critics view the archaeological record of Eurasia as a product of complex local and regional interaction, exchange, and innovation, reinvigorating essential debates around migration, diffusion, and autochthonous change in Eurasian prehistory. </jats:p

Biological Affinity in Medieval Central Asia

The Biological Affinity in Medieval Central Asia dataset includes images and tables of archaeological remains. It is the data which accompanies: Kinship and Religious Identities in Medieval Central Asia (8th-13th c. CE): Tracing Communities of Mortuary Practice and Biological Affinity