Central Asia (Other Keyword)
1-15 (15 Records)
Plants in the Chenopodium genus have attracted human interest around the globe for millennia; they have been used for grain and vegetable food as well as being a key forage plant for herd animals. Historically, several wild species have been economically significant across Eurasia, notably in Central Asia, and the genus has been domesticated in various parts of the world, including East Asia. Wild Chenopodium seeds are the dominant category of archaeobotanical remains found in the vast majority...
Biological Diversity in Medieval Uzbekistan: Examining Community Expression under the Qarakhanid State (2017)
This paper examines the expression of community during the Qarakhanid period (9th- 12th century CE) through a study of patterns of phenotypic diversity at medieval sites across Uzbekistan. The Qarakhanid dynasty is argued to be an integral period in the shaping of population, linguistic, and religious frameworks that shaped the social and ethnic landscapes of Central Asia up through the modern day. Historical sources suggest that the Qarakhanid rise to power instigated an in-migration of Turkic...
Earliest direct evidence of crop consumption in the central Tian Shan (Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan) (2015)
The main goal of this research is to explore the contribution of plant food to the diet of pastoral societies. It is still a subject of debate whether domesticated plants were being consumed and grown or just traded in this region during the Bronze Age, as the role of domesticated crops and their intensity of consumption in pastoral societies has been overlooked and until now hardly studied. This research presents the first results of stable carbon/nitrogen isotope analysis and archaeobotanical...
Evidence for Dung Burning in the Archaeobotanical Record of Central Asia (2017)
In the early 1980s Naomi Miller changed the way paleoethnobotanists in several parts of the world approached the interpretation of their data. With her research into whether the ancient seed eaters of southwest Asia were human or herbivore, she opened an ongoing debate over what impact the burning of animal dung had on archaeobotanical assemblages and how researchers can differentiate between human and animal food remains. As the number of systematic paleoethnobotanical studies across Central...
Home is Where the Herd Is: Social Factors and Mobility Patterns in Prehistoric Kazakhstan (2015)
Our understanding of the structure of pastoralist societies in prehistoric Eurasia is currently being reevaluated in light of new data from a range of sources. I present the results of a cementum annulation study done on domestic sheep teeth from prehistoric pastoralist communities in Semirech’ye, Kazakhstan. These data provide evidence that past mobility patterns were not necessarily rigidly dictated by seasonal climate conditions. Rather, although the environment was certainly a major factor...
In-Visible Periphery of Old World "Collapse": Recognizing choice and circumstance in the archaeological record of mobile pastoralists (2015)
As in many regions of the Old World, the end of the Bronze Age in southern Central Asia is marked by a prolonged period of social "collapse" toward the end of the 2nd millennium BC, during which the size, arrangement, and apparent sphere of influence of agriculturally-based population centers changed. Discussions of this period focus primarily on the loss of visible markers of social hierarchy and inter-regional trade networks, but as our collective knowledge of mobile pastoralists in Eurasian...
Irrigation Canals as Subaltern Agents of Resistence: An Example from 19th Century Russian Turkestan (2017)
In the mid 19th century, Imperial Russia established domination over "Russian Turkestan," a large territory in Central Asia. A core part of the colonial mission was the transformation of Turkestan's arid environments into productive farmland. Though this was eventually achieved by the Soviets who constructed massive new irrigation systems in Central Asia, earlier imperial authorities failed in this task and struggled for decades to wrest control of water management from local populations. In...
Kalas and Urbanism in Western Central Asia (2017)
Kalas (qalas), as iconic fortified enclosure sites, were nodes within dispersed and low-density settlement patterns of Central Asian oases. The largest kalas functioned as the equivalent of urban centers for mobile, agro-pastoral societies. A complex and diversified system of agro-pastoral subsistence and production strategies were employed within the oases in response to extreme climatic and environmental conditions. This paper will focus on the transition from the Late Antique to Early...
The monumentality of ancient pastoral landscapes in Western Tian Shan (Xinjiang, China) (2017)
This paper examines the spatial configuration of stone structures built for ritual and funerary uses in the steppes of Western Tian Shan based on results of survey and excavation in the Bortala and Ili River Valleys in Xinjiang, China. Marked by clusters of structures attributed typologically to different epochs of human activity, these sites evince a recurring architectural expression of ritual and funerary customs spanning upwards of centuries. The additive process by which some of these...
Pastoral Communities Thrived in a Rocky Valley of the Tian-Shan Mountains--New Survey Results of the Dense Pastoralist Sites in the Mohuchahan Valley of Xinjiang, China (2015)
Newly identified pastoral sites in the Mohuchahan Valley have the potential of preserving 3000 years of pastoral settlement history in the middle section of the Tian-Shan Mountains. Located between a rich high-elevation meadow and a low-elevation oasis, this seemly barren valley might have served as an ideal residing place for numerous generations of local nomads. The scale and density of the burials and settlements they left suggest the communities once thrived here in ancient times probably...
Resuscitating an Archaeology Project: The Helmand-Sistan Project in Afghanistan, 1971-1977 (2017)
The Helmand-Sistan Project, conducted jointly by American and Afghan archaeologists, was the first prolonged systematic survey and excavation of the lower Helmand River region of southwest Afghanistan. It identified over 200 sites dating from the third millennium BCE to the 15th century CE and conducted excavations at a dozen of them. Military action abruptly halted the project, caused the demise of its collection of material culture stored in Afghanistan, and limited publication to a few...
Tethered, Ad Hoc, Resilient, or Structured? An Isotopic Investigation of Pastoral Strategies in Montane Ecosystems of Central Asia (2016)
This paper focuses on tracking the mobility and diets of domesticated animals using isotopic analysis. We present two archaeological contexts from mountain regions of Central Asia: 1) A 9th-10th century (medieval) iron smelting town located at 2000 masl in the Zaamin Mtns. of Uzbekistan and 2) a series of Bronze Age (2500-1200 BCE) pastoral settlements located between 900 and 1500 masl in the Dzhungar Mtns. of eastern Kazakhstan. We are curious about pastoral productivity as it relates to social...
There's Sand in the Sensor! EO approaches to interpreting delta-desert transitional environments (2017)
The complex boundary regions between deltas and deserts pose particular difficulties for archaeological enquiry. In these regions, the dynamic interactions between aeolian and alluvial processes result in continuously changing hydrosocial landscapes that manifest over a range of spatio-temporal analytical scales. The wealth of tools, methodologies and theoretical approaches offered by the burgeoning field of remote sensing can help to deconstruct complex and often visually obstructed human...
Torbulok - a sanctuary in the Hellenistic Far East (2017)
A sanctuary of the Hellenistic period was recently discovered at the village of Torbulok in southwest Tajikistan. Its discovery was based on a random find of a large limestone vessel, identified as a perirrhanterion – a vessel for Greek purification rituals. The excavations, started in 2013 by a German-Tajik team, gave insights into the structure of the sanctuary and confirmed the dating to the 3rd and 2nd century BC, as Bactria was part of the Hellenistic world. The unearthed installations and...
Using Geoarchaeological Methods to Evaluate Site Integrity at Dali, Kazakhstan (2015)
Dali, a site located in the Bayan-Zherek Valley in Semirech'ye, Southeastern Kazakhstan, is a multi-phase Bronze Age pastoralist settlement (3rd-2nd millennia B.C.). Recovered artifacts include combustion features, bones, ceramics, lithics, bronze metals, and potentially in situ wall constructions. Radiocarbon dates cannot conclusively suggest that the stratigraphic sequence is in situ due to geological unconformities and high energy colluvial system, so geoarchaeological methods were employed...