Pastoralism (Other Keyword)
76-100 (134 Records)
The vertical ingredient of the Tibetan Plateau plays a unique role in making of the highland agro-pastoral landscape. We divide the Tibetan Plateau into three eco-altitudinal zones: areas below 3,000 m.a.s.l.; areas between 3,000 and 4,200 m.a.s.l.; and areas above 4,200 m.a.s.l. Today, pastoralists and farmers utilize different faunal and floral taxa in the three zones, partly as risk aversion strategies. In this paper, I review the zooarchaeological evidence dated between 6,000 and 1,000 BP...
Material Wealth and Herding Power: A Pastoralist Perspective on Divine Lordship from Pashash, Peru (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Ancient Pastoralism in a Global Perspective" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Fluctuating political allegiances during the Early Intermediate period (200 BCE–600 CE) were coopted by competing leaders throughout the central Peruvian highlands and more broadly in the south-central Andes. The relationships and conflicts that resulted from socioeconomic negotiations among local networks; alongside the vacuum of power left...
Migrations and Exchange: Early Pastoral Mobility in Kenya Assessed Through Stable Isotope Analysis (2015)
Specialized pastoralism emerged in Kenya around 3000 years ago and has adapted with changes in the social and ecological landscape to this day. Ethnographic research has documented significant changes in herding strategies among pastoral groups throughout colonial and post-colonial periods. Stable isotope analysis sheds light on how crucial mobility was in maintaining herds before the appearance of iron-using and –producing peoples in the region. Intra-tooth sequential sampling of livestock...
Millennium and Charisma Among Pathans: a Critical Essay in Social Anthropology (1976)
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The (Missing) Archaeology of the Early Medieval Nomads (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Mind the Gap: Exploring Uncharted Territories in Medieval European Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The goal of this paper is to take a fresh, critical look at the work done on medieval nomads, especially in Eastern Europe, over the last three decades or so. It will focus on three crucial aspects. First, the relation between pastoralism (a separate problem for medieval archaeology) and nomadism, and the...
Missions, Herds, and Habitat: Analyzing Livestock Dynamics in the Desert Pimería Alta (2024)
This is an abstract from the "The Columbian Exchange Revisited: Archaeological and Anthropological Perspectives on Eurasian Domesticates in the Americas" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Columbian Exchange reshaped ecosystems and societies across the Western Hemisphere, and the Pimería Alta (today Sonora and Arizona) was no exception. The establishment of Spanish colonial missions in the Pimería Alta region beginning in 1687 marked a pivotal...
A Model for Mobility in the Irish Iron Age (2019)
This is an abstract from the "On the Periphery or the Leading Edge? Research in Prehistoric Ireland" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Irish Iron Age (~700 BC – AD 500) has been a point of consternation for archaeologists, with large ceremonial centers but scanty settlement evidence. While, during this period, more densely populated and proto-urban settlements emerged in Britain and the European Continent, settlements in Ireland diminished in...
Neolithic Pastoralist Practices at Masis Blur, Armenia’s Ararat Valley (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Ancient Pastoralism in a Global Perspective" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Neolithic settlements appeared across the Southern Caucasus in the early sixth millennium BCE. Ongoing excavations, along with zooarchaeological and isotopic research, are clarifying how these communities used the landscape and managed livestock in the context of mixed farming. In this paper we present new zooarchaeological data from recent...
Nomadic Cities and Network Modularity: Scalar Analysis in Ancient Urbanism and Social Connectivity (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Regional Settlement Networks Analysis: A Global Comparison" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The discovery of small to mid-sized cities (Tashbulak and Tugunbulak) built by the Qarakhanids (ninth–twelfth century CE) at high elevation illustrates that urban centers used by nomadic khanates may have operated under a unique model of “modular” urbanism, which we define as a hybridized form of urban development and nomadic...
Nutrient hotspots and pastoral legacies in East African savannas (2015)
Negative impacts of pastoralists on African savannas have been debated but creation of nutrient hotspots may have significant positive effects. African savanna productivity is largely nutrient limited, however, ecologists show corrals in abandoned Maasai pastoral settlements have high nitrogen and phosphate levels, and distinctive vegetation and grazing successions. Such hotspots may drive ecosystem structure and function, but little is known about how long-term or how widespread they may be....
Nutritional and Infectious Diseases in the Bronze and Iron Ages of Mongolia: The Archaeological Significance (2021)
This is an abstract from the "New Directions in Mongolian Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The identification of nutritional and infectious diseases in human skeletal assemblages has value for both bioarchaeologists and archaeologists for assessing the impact of particular biosocial and environmental contexts on health. This paper presents skeletal evidence of the nutritional diseases rickets, osteomalacia, and scurvy, and infectious...
Obsidian Characterization in East Africa (2019)
This is an abstract from the "2019 Fryxell Award Symposium: Papers in Honor of M. Steven Shackley" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Steve Shackley’s wide-reaching research includes X-ray fluorescence analyses of obsidian from East Africa. He and co-authors explored sources of obsidian from sites in Ethiopia, providing data that informed many later studies in a relatively unknown region for obsidian studies. Our work on obsidian from mid-Holocene...
Old World Pastoralisms in the Early Colonial Andes: A Reassessment of Faunal Remains from Colonial Contexts at Inka Administrative Sites in the Central Sierra (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 pursues a reexamination of faunal remains recovered from colonial-period archaeological contexts at two major Inka administrative centers located in the central highlands of modern-day Peru: Huánuco Pampa (excavated by Craig Morris from 1971-1976); and Pumpu (excavated by Ramiro Matos from 1984-1988). Owing to their status as major centers of...
Paleodietary Analysis of Xiongnu Individuals in Zuunkhangai, Mongolia (2018)
The archaeology of the Xiongnu period has grown considerably over the last decade, yet debate still surrounds Xiongnu subsistence practices and the timing for the rise, expansion, and ‘collapse’ of the Xiongnu polity. The problem, in part, has to do with discrepancies between dates that come from the same sites. Some dates have been reported to be earlier when the samples came from human remains. These discrepancies have been attributed to the ‘reservoir effect’. In order to investigate this, we...
Paleoenvironment and the Hunter-Herder Transition in Northwestern Mongolia (2016)
New paleoenvironmental proxy data indicate a series of changes in hydrology and environment from the terminal Pleistocene through middle Holocene in Uvs Province, Mongolia. Recent archaeological surveys, excavations and GIS-based analyses suggest these changes may correlate with alterations in technology and land use that are arguably consistent with the temporal span thought to represent the adoption and/or in situ development of pastoralist economies across the region. These correlations are...
Paleoproteomic Perspectives on the Subsistence Decisions of Later Stone Age Herders in Namaqualand, South Africa (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Ancient Pastoralism in a Global Perspective" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ceramic-bound protein characterization, or paleoproteomics, can provide vital insight into the species-specific dietary decisions preserved in the pottery of past populations. This insight is particularly relevant for understanding the subsistence choices of Later Stone Age (LSA) herders living in the Namaqualand coastal desert of South...
“Paria Caca Loves Him": The Camelid and Huarochirí Sustenance and Ceremony (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Camelids, especially llamas, feature prominently in the myths, history, and descriptions of ceremony that constitute the seventeenth-century Quechua manuscript of Huarochirí. In this text they augur catastrophe (vocally and through readings of their insides); they were the focus of annual gatherings of flocks, families, and fertility charms; they were offered...
Pastoral Categories for LandCover 6K (2017)
In this talk I will discuss the categories that will be used for the LandCover 6k Project to track pastoral land use over time. These new categories will be discussed in terms of the more traditional categories archaeologist and historians have used to talk about pastoralism. I will give examples of how these new categories can be used to track pastoral land use in Eurasia using archaeological data.
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...
Pastoral Territoriality as a Dynamic Coupled Human-Natural System (2018)
Despite research indicating that contemporary pastoral societies are more dynamic than previously assumed, there is a tendency to view South Arabian pastoralists as timeless heirs of a stable, ancient system or along a historical continuum of response to exogenous factors like the development of civilization, introduction of camels, or global climate change. In research triggered by NGS support, we proposal a new conceptual model for pastoral mobility regulated by dynamic feedback loops in...
Pastoralism and Landscape Sustainability: A Mediterranean Perspective (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Exploring Long-Term Pastoral Dynamics: Methods, Theories, Stories" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The contraction of traditional pastoral practices in the last century has prompted a rapid transformation of those landscapes whose character had been shaped by pastoral mobility. A transformation that is accentuated by the consequences of climate change. This process is particularly relevant in Mediterranean landscapes,...
Pastoralisms of the Andes: a southern and central Andean perspective (2017)
In this paper we contrast and compare the development of pastoralism at two opposite yet complimentary geographical locations with a focus on pastoralist impact on the environment. In Argentina we present the evolution and development of pastoralism [c. 3,300-400BP] in the arid highlands of Antofagasta de la Sierra, as societies negotiated the shift from hunter-gathering to a more mixed, but increasingly, pastoralist economy culminating in late complex agro-pastoralist adaptations. Similarly in...
Pastoralist Connections in the South-Central Andes During the Spanish Colonial Period (2022)
This is a poster submission presented at the 2022 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Historians have long recognized the centrality of Latin American colonial mining to the development of global economies. Andean pastoralist networks, comprising long-term relationships between herders, animals, and landscapes, were central to the movement of raw materials – yet have been marginalized in narratives of early modern development. Here, I present preliminary findings from...
Pastoralist Intensification and Dietary Dynamics in the Mongolian Steppe: Multi-isotope Analyses of Human and Faunal Collagen (2021)
This is an abstract from the "New Directions in Mongolian Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The initial spread of pastoralism into the Mongolian steppe during the third millennium cal BC marked a major transformation in human subsistence. Dairying was practiced by early pastoralist groups, evidenced by the identification of milk proteins preserved in human dental calculus. However, we have a poor understanding of how the focused...
Pastoralist Spacetimes and Political Life in the Past: Exploring the Value of Living and Dead Animals Archaeologically (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Ancient Pastoralism in a Global Perspective" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Anthropological approaches to value assert that creating and contesting value is at the heart of politics. Herd animals offer a complex window into this basic theoretical insight—they are simultaneously producers of and objects of value and their value cannot be easily reduced to the categories of economic or symbolic value. Analyzing...