Ongoing Research in Eurasian Archaeology: Assessing the Implications of New Evidence

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Anthony.

New methods for analyzing ancient human DNA are introducing a new "molecular archaeology". aDNA permits us to detect mating networks, to see ancestry evolve across generations as populations expanded or died out, to track migrants and their genes across geographic space, and to say whether and with what frequency migrants and the indigenous population mated at the destination. aDNA analysis is an unprecedented tool for the study of ancient migrations, kinship, and biological adaptation. This...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Svend Hansen.

The Neolithic way of life arrived in the Caucasus at the beginning of the 6th Millennium B.C. Recent excavations in Arukhlo in the Republic of Georgia, not far away from the capital Tblisis, shed light on the occupation of the place between 5800 and 5400 BC. The buildung activities on the site were several times interrupted by digging deep ditches through the village. In the presentation it will be argued that Arukhlo and probably other places were centres of ritual activities.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elissa Bullion.

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dorcas Brown. David Anthony.

The final report of the Samara Valley Project (SVP), a U.S.-Russian archaeological investigation conducted between 1995 and 2002 in the Samara Oblast in central Russia, was published in June 2016. The SVP explored the changing organization and subsistence resources of pastoral steppe economies from the Eneolithic (4500BC) through the Late Bronze Age (1900-1200BC) across the steppe and river valley landscape in the middle Volga region.  Particular attention focuses on the role of agriculture...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mike Teufer.

The Late Bronze Age site of Saridjar was discovered during a survey of the northern Yakhsu valley in 2010. Excavations in 2012, in 2013, 2015 and in 2016 prove that we are dealing with a 200 x 200 m large settlement with at least three construction phases. The proportion of the hand-made ceramics in all levels varies between 80 and 90%. Only occasionally wheel-made ware appears. Andronovo pottery of the Federovo phase is present in small numbers. At Karimberdy nearly all the pottery was...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Denis Sharapov.

First polities in the Eurasian steppes are documented by the Greek and Chinese historical accounts of the Scythians (9th-3rd centuries BC) and the Xiongnu (3rd century BC – 1st century AD). Archaeologically, these entities manifested themselves in complex settlement networks, consisting of fortified sites, dispersed farmsteads, and mobile pastoral camps. Earlier roots of political organization in the Eurasian steppes are largely limited to funerary and ceremonial monuments, which presumably...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Udo Schlotzhauer. Denis Zhuravlev. Daniel Kelterbaum. Anca Dan. Hans-Joachim Gehrke.

Landscapes are subject to ongoing geological transformation which change, hide or even destroy for their part anthropogenic remains. The reconstruction of historic landscapes as well as the causes of their changes is subject of geoarchaeology. A noteworthy example for a reconstruction of the historical landscape of a whole region is demonstrated by an interdisciplinary and international project on the South Russian Taman peninsula in the North Pontus. The new insights that were made by...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kathryn MacFarland.

Realistic, symbolic and metaphorical representations of animals (i.e., Animal Style Art), and associated themes ("griffins"/animal fusion, combat, geometric design within animal) depicted on artifacts attributed to Scythian, Saka, and Xiongnu, from Iron Age (ca., 1,000-100 BC) north central Eurasia are the focus of statistical analyses identifying structured usage amongst the regions, linked to religious beliefs. Common expression of symbolic subject matter and themes on artifacts is analyzed...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sabine Reinhold.

After more than one millennium of mobile pastoral lifeways, the mid-2nd millennium BC witnessed the reappearance of village-based life in an area stretching from the Black Sea, across Caucasia to Anatolia and North Western Iran. Its manifestation is the emergence of stone-built dwellings clustered in small or middle-sized settlements. Concurrently, the transformation of the 3rd millennium BC mobile pastoralism into combined mountain agriculture allowed retaining a pastoral economy in spite of a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kathryn Franklin. Astghik Babajanyan.

This paper presents observations from recent seasons of research in the Vayoc Dzor region of southern Armenia, in the context of a long-term and multi-sited program of investigations into the intersections of locally situated highland social phenomena within the broader Silk Road cultural ecumene during the late medieval period (AD 12th-15th centuries). This ongoing project builds on an understanding of late medieval Armenian participation in and co-production of the worlds of the Silk Road,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gabrielle Borenstein.

How do material remains – and the imagery that adorns them – inform our understanding of past landscapes? How does knowledge of landscapes enrich our understanding of the objects produced within them? This paper explores the relationship between iconography and environment in the Early Bronze Age Kura-Araxes (3500-2400 BC) culture. The Kura-Araxes was arguably the most widespread archaeological horizon in the ancient Near East, extending from the Caucasus to the Levant to the Zagros Mountains....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alan Greene.

After more than a century of Russian Imperial and Soviet research dominated by the excavation of tumulus burials, researchers in the South Caucasus have now spent two decades investigating exactly how settlement archaeology sheds light on the inhabitants of the region's earliest polities (ca. 1500-1150 BC). Most of this data has emerged from the sites of the Tsaghkahovit Plain, which have served as a micro-regional laboratory for Bronze and Iron Age studies since 1998. But how exactly do these...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gunvor Lindstroem.

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...