Asia: Central Asia (Other Keyword)
1-25 (28 Records)
This is an abstract from the "Advances in Stone Age Archaeology of Central Asia" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Genetic and archaeological evidence imply a second major movement of Neanderthals from Western to Central and Eastern Eurasia sometime in the Late Pleistocene. Genetic data suggest a date of 120-80ka for the dispersal and the archaeological record provides an earliest date of arrival in the Altai by ca. 60ka. Because the number of...
Azizkendi Tepe: Results From the Second Season of Excavations at a New “Leilatepe” Period Site in the Republic of Georgia (2025)
This is an abstract from the "Divergent Paths, Shared Histories: Examining Archaeological Trends from the Caucasus to Mongolia" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Azizkendi Tepe is a Late Chalcolithic period (ca 3900-3500BCE) site located in the Marneuli plain in southern Georgia. The site was discovered in 2019 during pedestrian survey and after just two seasons of excavation it has come to hold a unique and important place in the archaeology of the...
Creation of a Macrobotanical and Phytolith Reference Collection for Archaeobotanical Investigation in Tarvagatai Valley, Mongolia (2025)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Limited ethno- and archaeobotanical studies have been conducted on the forest-steppe ecological zone of northern Mongolia. This project focuses on the creation of a macrobotanical and phytolith reference collection of flowering plants in this region as part of ongoing archaeobotanical research with the Tarvagatai Valley Project, particularly in the...
Feeding a Steppe Garrison: Biomolecular Insights into Food Remains from Medieval Mongolia (2025)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This research is the first of its kind to be conducted on Medieval potshards from Mongolia and China (10-14 centuries CE). It analyzes pottery vessels found at garrison sites associated with lines of walls and border demarcation that were constructed by the Liao (916-1125 CE) and Jin (1115-1234 CE) dynasties. It enables us to trace the food remains of the...
Final Bronze to Early Iron Age Metallurgical Technologies at Kimirek-kum-1, Uzbekistan (2025)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. <html> While metal production technologies and exchange networks in Bronze Age Central Asia have captured much scholarly attention, the metal economy of the subsequent Final Bronze to Early Iron Age southern Central Asia in the late 2<sup>nd</sup> millennium BC is rarely investigated. Recent excavations and surveys at Kimirek-kum-1 (KK1; ca. 1250-1050 cal....
Giving relevance to the old: Training Kazakhstani students in Stone Age methods (2025)
This is an abstract from the "Advances in Stone Age Archaeology of Central Asia" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Kazakhstan has a rich archaeological past, but much of the focus by national and international archaeologists continues to be on Bronze Age, Iron Age, and later periods. In recent years, Paleolithic researchers have developed projects to expand our knowledge on the deeper past and the hominins that made this region their home. Here, we...
Heads and Hooves in Late Bronze Age Armenia: Contextualizing the Post-mortem Circulation of Animal Remains (2025)
This is an abstract from the "Divergent Paths, Shared Histories: Examining Archaeological Trends from the Caucasus to Mongolia" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The phenomenon of depositing the head and lower extremities of herd animals in mortuary and ritual contexts was widespread across Eurasia, as was first noted in Piggott’s 1962 article on “head and hoofs” burials. There is a long local tradition of these deposits in mortuary monuments in the...
The History of Animal Sacrifice in Mongolia (2025)
This is an abstract from the "Divergent Paths, Shared Histories: Examining Archaeological Trends from the Caucasus to Mongolia" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Animals fill numerous roles within the broader dynamic of human-animal relationships; from prey to pet, from mode of transportation to guide, from source of secondary products to guard, and numerous others. In archaeology, one of the most readily identifiable of these roles is sacrificial...
Hunting Strategies and Cattle Management: 2500 Years Isotope Data from Tamsagbulag (ca. 8500 – 6000 BP), Mongolia. (2025)
This is an abstract from the "Divergent Paths, Shared Histories: Examining Archaeological Trends from the Caucasus to Mongolia" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Tamsagbulag is an Early Neolithic site in eastern Mongolia inhabited by hunter-gatherers from ca. 8500BP. Upon arrival at Tamsagbulag, these hunter-gatherers began to develop and occupy seasonal surface and subsurface dwellings, which continued for at least 2500 years before the site was...
Introducing a Standardized and Adaptable Method for Rock Art Recording (2025)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The authors advocate for the adoption of a standardized method for rock art recording since it is a reproducible archaeological record. As in any other field, standardization strengthens the reliability of data, facilitates comparative studies and enhances collaboration. The method relies primarily on a multiscale approach to rock art (country, region,...
Investigating Early Pastoralist Landscapes in Eurasia through Integration of Archaeological Geophysics and Soil Chemistry: Challenges and Opportunities (2025)
This is an abstract from the "Divergent Paths, Shared Histories: Examining Archaeological Trends from the Caucasus to Mongolia" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The study of early pastoralist landscapes, and associated patterns of occupation, resource use, and niche construction, present many challenges to conventional archaeological field research. Over the past two decades, the integration of near surface geophysical survey and soil geochemistry,...
Late Upper Palaeolithic Evidence Of Human Settlement In The Northern Tian Shan (Kazakhstan): New Results From Tikenekti 2 (2025)
This is an abstract from the "Advances in Stone Age Archaeology of Central Asia" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.
Linkages between Copper and Bronze Technological Styles and Pastoral Movement in Late Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age Central Asia (2025)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The socio-economic impact of pastoralism, particularly sheep grazing, is one of the more thoroughly investigated themes in contemporary ethnohistoric and archaeological landscape studies for Central Asia, particularly in relation to practices of vertical and horizontal transhumance. However, the cultural implications of pastoralist practices in relation...
Middle Paleolithic industries of Mongolia: chronology and technological variability (2025)
This is an abstract from the "Advances in Stone Age Archaeology of Central Asia" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Middle Paleolithic is represented mainly by its final stage in Mongolia, and chronologically overlaps with the appearance of Initial Upper Paleolithic large blade technology in the region. Although human fossils associated with archaeological remains have not yet been found in Mongolia, presumably several human populations bearing...
Paleolithic fieldwork in the Upper Zeravshan Valley, Tajikistan: first results and perspectives (2025)
This is an abstract from the "Advances in Stone Age Archaeology of Central Asia" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Zeravshan River, which drains the north-western part of the Pamir and Tian-Shan Mountains, is a part of what was recently named the Inner Asian Mountain Corridor; the piedmont sandwiched between the desert and high Mountains of Pamir, Tianshan, and Altai. This corridor provided a refugium for human populations during periods of...
Pleistocene-Holocene Climate Change and Early Human Occupation of the Pamir Mountains, Tajikistan (2025)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Early human occupation of high-elevation mountains is a much debated yet understudied topic in contemporary archaeological science. One of these regions where a large number of archaeological sites have been found is the Eastern Pamir, Tajikistan. The average elevation of the region is 3000-4500 m a.s.l., and the modern climate is dry with sparse...
A preliminary climate-settlement framework for the last glacial cycle in Central Asia based on data from Kazakhstan (2025)
This is an abstract from the "Advances in Stone Age Archaeology of Central Asia" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Central Asia has emerged as a crucial locus for understanding recent human evolution in Eurasia. It is particularly important for understanding adaptation during dispersal, as it is both the locus of interaction among several archaic and modern human populations and, at the same time, a region that lies on the threshold of aridity. At...
Reconstructing Stone Tool Function at Tikenekti-2, Kazakhstan (2025)
This is an abstract from the "Advances in Stone Age Archaeology of Central Asia" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Understanding hominin interaction with their environment is crucial for identifying what parts of everyday life were integral to survival during the Late Pleistocene of Central Asia. Rapid changes in climate would have mandated adaptation by hominins traveling through or living in this region. This is especially true for the hominins...
Sheep, cows, landscapes: Eurasian archaeology? (2025)
This is an abstract from the "Divergent Paths, Shared Histories: Examining Archaeological Trends from the Caucasus to Mongolia" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper draws on faunal analyses and field surveys conducted in Armenia and Central Asia to consider the utility of the idea of Eurasian archaeology. Broadly synthetic, it compares pastoral strategies and land use practices from the Bronze Age through the Medieval period. Although...
Shifting Niches: Pleistocene and Holocene Human Landscapes in the Gobi and Gobi-Steppe (2025)
This is an abstract from the "Divergent Paths, Shared Histories: Examining Archaeological Trends from the Caucasus to Mongolia" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The way that landscapes are used is indicative of many aspects of human culture. Data on human land-use in the Gobi Desert maps millennia of adaptation, but the resulting picture shows that climate change is not the only factor that has played a decisive role. It is becoming increasingly...
Shifting Shores and Moving People: The Caspian in the Iron Age and Beyond (2025)
This is an abstract from the "Divergent Paths, Shared Histories: Examining Archaeological Trends from the Caucasus to Mongolia" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Caspian Sea is a fulcrum that shaped movement potentials at the western edge of the Eurasian Steppe. Either a small sea or the world’s largest salty lake, the Caspian is a complex space both ecologically and socially. The nature of the Caspian’s catchment and drainage systems mean that...
Spring Landscapes as Persistent Places of Human Occupation: a Multi-disciplinary Approach Investigating the Palaeolithic of Kazakhstan (2025)
This is an abstract from the "Advances in Stone Age Archaeology of Central Asia" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The first dispersals of Homo sapiens into Asia occurred during the Late Pleistocene (ca. 129,000 – 11,700 years ago) and involved traversing arid regions. Springs are groundwater systems that likely played a vital role in human expansion across arid areas where surface waters, like rivers and lakes, were scarce. Despite this, the...
Steppe Architecture: Structures within the Enclosures of the Medieval Wall System (2025)
This is an abstract from the "Divergent Paths, Shared Histories: Examining Archaeological Trends from the Caucasus to Mongolia" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Mongolian steppe is often associated with pastoral nomadism and seasonal mobility. However, mobility does not necessarily mean transience; Architecture always served an important role not only in the adaptability of people in the steppe to the environment, but also as a demonstration of...
Stratified Stone Age sites are few and hard to find: A welcome exception at the Koken site in Kazakhstan (2025)
This is an abstract from the "Advances in Stone Age Archaeology of Central Asia" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Late period hunter-gatherers of the Eurasian Steppe remain among the most understudied and least deciphered societies in the archaeology of Kazakhstan. A shortage of stratified or well-preserved late Palaeolithic and early Holocene campsites places a scholarly dependence on lithic assemblages that are often not pinned to radiometric...
Temperature Check! Aerial Thermography as a Complement to Geophysical Survey in Hellenistic Central Asia: A Case Study from the Bukhara Oasis, Uzbekistan (2025)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper presents preliminary results of systematic aerial and geophysical survey in the Kyzylkum Desert, west of the Bukhara Oasis (Uzbekistan) from 2023-24. Our work utilizes a combined approach of magnetometry, ground penetrating radar, traditional panchromatic aerial photography, and aerial thermography to document land use patterns of relict...