New Directions in Mongolian Archaeology

DOCUMENT Citation Only Henny Piezonka. Enkhtuul Chadrabaal. Jonathan Ethier. Martin Oczipka. Christian Ressel.

This is an abstract from the "New Directions in Mongolian Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Towns and cities have been an integral part of the Mongolian nomadic society for more than a millennium, and abandoned urban sites from various periods dot the land, inscribing memories of lost empires and long-gone alliances into the cultural landscape. The relation between sedentary urban and mobile pastoralist lifeways has constituted a key...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer Farquhar. Arlene Rosen.

This is an abstract from the "New Directions in Mongolian Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper presents preliminary findings from ongoing research on the development of pastoralism in Mongolia’s semiarid desert-steppe. The project involves a multiscale investigation of human-environment interactions, specifically the relationship between climate change and land use, and how adaptive strategies impacted natural and social...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kristen Pearson.

This is an abstract from the "New Directions in Mongolian Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In Mongolia, ethnoarchaeological methods have been applied to questions of mobility, spatial organization, site formation, and animal husbandry practices, among others. An area that remains to be explored is the application of ethnoarchaeological methods to the study of craft production, particularly as out relates to distinctive local resources,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Natalia Égüez. Jean-Luc Houle. Oula Seitsonen. Jamsranjav Bayarshaikhan.

This is an abstract from the "New Directions in Mongolian Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Lipid biomarkers such as alkanes, fatty acids, and steroids together with their stable carbon and hydrogen isotope ratios are nowadays leading proxies for the identification of past climate variability, human activities, and animal presence in a site. These can be extracted from modern feces, desiccated dung, and soil sediments. When applied to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only William Taylor. Jamsranjav Bayarsaikhan. Isaac Hart.

This is an abstract from the "New Directions in Mongolian Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The emergence of herding economies prompted drastic changes to life in eastern Eurasia—situating the cold, arid steppes of Mongolia as a center of the ancient world. Although a growing body of evidence points to an important role for mountain zones in this transition, issues of archaeological preservation have prevented a clear understanding of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Asa Cameron. Bukhchuluun Dashzeveg. Jonathan Mark Kenoyer.

This is an abstract from the "New Directions in Mongolian Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During the Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age in Mongolia, communities across the region adopted mobile pastoralism and horse-riding technology. In conjunction with these changes in subsistence and mobility patterns, innovative funerary practices emerged that incorporated monumental construction and new mortuary offerings. Included in these grave...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Angela Evoy.

This is an abstract from the "New Directions in Mongolian Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Flaked and ground stone axes and adzes first appeared in the eastern Gobi Desert at 8.0 cal BP and were incorporated into the technological package. At the same time, changes in local ecological conditions reflect a transition from continuous grass/shrub-steppe across the Mongolian Plateau to the development of dispersed patches of dune-field...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Melandri Vlok. Erdene Myagmar. Hallie Buckley.

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cheryl Makarewicz. Iain Kendall.

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lisa Janz.

This is an abstract from the "New Directions in Mongolian Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Tamsagbulag, in the far eastern steppe, is the only known example of high-density site occupation in Mongolia that predates the Iron Age. Based on the frequency and treatment of cattle remains, mid-twentieth-century excavators interpreted Tamsagbulag as an agropastoralist community. New excavations in 2018 revealed several hundred years of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bukhchuluun Dashzeveg. Lisa Janz. Odsuren Davaakhuu. Asa Cameron.

This is an abstract from the "New Directions in Mongolian Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During the late second millennium BC, communities in the Gobi-steppe of Mongolia began to build unique burial structures made of stone. The Late Bronze Age builders of these mortuary features employed new forms of surface demarcation and for the first time in this region, individuals were interred in a prone position. At the turn of the...