From the Altai to the Arctic: New Results and New Directions in the Archaeology of North and Inner Asia

Part of: Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "From the Altai to the Arctic: New Results and New Directions in the Archaeology of North and Inner Asia" at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The archaeology and anthropology of northern Eurasia tends to proceed from its filleting into three massive continent-spanning strips—the terrestrial biomes of the steppe, the taiga, and the tundra—with certain nods to the gradations between them, other vegetation communities biting in from the south, and the separate world of its marine fringes. This session brings together researchers of Mongolia, steppic and montane Central Asia, Siberia, and maritime Northeast Asia to break well out of this conventional siloing. With perspectives and toolkits spanning monumental iconography, genome-wide ancient DNA, textile analysis, historical linguistics, osteoarchaeology, ceramic geochemistry, and beyond, we highlight both the diversity of practices and trajectories accommodated within each zone and shared inheritances and channels of connection that cut far across ecologies and latitudes. In grasslands, uplands, boreal forests, wetlands, and the shores of cold seas, we draw out the heterogeneity, surprising parallels, crackling interfaces, and repeatedly refreshed links that have enmeshed this vast region for millennia.

Other Keywords
Bronze Age • Trade and exchange • ancient DNA • Zooarchaeology • Landscape Archaeology • Neolithic • Monumentality • Iron Age • Iconography and epigraphy • Migration

Geographic Keywords
Asia (Continent) • Kyrgyz Republic (Country) • Republic of Azerbaijan (Country) • Republic of Uzbekistan (Country) • State of Kuwait (Country) • Turkmenistan (Country) • Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (Country) • Republic of Tajikistan (Country) • Republic of Kazakhstan (Country) • Japan (Country)

Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-14 of 14)

  • Documents (14)
Documents
  • Ancient Mongolian Aurochs Genomes Reveal Connections to East Asian Cattle (2023)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Katherine Brunson. Kelsey Witt. Sloan Williams. Susan Monge. Lisa Janz.

    This is an abstract from the "From the Altai to the Arctic: New Results and New Directions in the Archaeology of North and Inner Asia" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Societies in East Asia have utilized domesticated cattle since approximately 5,000 years ago, but the origins of East Asian cattle remain understudied. Possible experimentation with management of wild aurochs (Bos primigenius) and other bovids has been hypothesized but not explored in...

  • Bronze Age Transitions in Their Own Words: Central Asian Interfaces (2023)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Rasmus Bjørn.

    This is an abstract from the "From the Altai to the Arctic: New Results and New Directions in the Archaeology of North and Inner Asia" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Loanword analysis is a unique contribution of historical linguistics to our understanding of prehistoric cultural interfaces. As language reflects the lives of its speakers, the substantiation of loanwords draws on the composite evidence from linguistic as well as archaeology and...

  • Deer Stones and the Bronze to Iron Age Transition in Mongolia (2023)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only William Fitzhugh.

    This is an abstract from the "From the Altai to the Arctic: New Results and New Directions in the Archaeology of North and Inner Asia" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Late Bronze Age Mongolian culture known for its memorial deer stones and khirigsuur burials (DSK complex), dating to 1300–700 BCE, persists over several hundred years with little change in ritual art and architecture. Deer stones are memorials to deceased leaders that display...

  • The Delgerkhaan uul Survey: Preliminary Results (2023)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Joshua Wright. William Honeychurch. Chunag Amartuvshin. Sarah Pleuger.

    This is an abstract from the "From the Altai to the Arctic: New Results and New Directions in the Archaeology of North and Inner Asia" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The paper reports on a full coverage intensive survey of a water rich region in the Southeast Gobi desert, Mongolia, which with the support of many excavations provide a robust chronological framework from the mid-Holocene to the historic Manchu period. Archaeological survey recorded...

  • Examining Bronze Age Kinship and Community Patterning in the Southern Urals, Russian Federation, through aDNA Study (2023)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Tekla Schmaus. Bryan Hanks. David Reich. Margaret Judd. Andrei Epimakhov.

    This is an abstract from the "From the Altai to the Arctic: New Results and New Directions in the Archaeology of North and Inner Asia" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ancient DNA studies have increased exponentially in recent years and have had tremendous impact on our understanding of early genomic patterning in many regions of the world. The vast Eurasian steppe zone has not been overlooked in these important breakthroughs. Several recent studies...

  • Following the Felt: Object Trajectories and Gendered Social Networks in Contemporary Western Mongolia (2023)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Kristen Pearson.

    This is an abstract from the "From the Altai to the Arctic: New Results and New Directions in the Archaeology of North and Inner Asia" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeologists have suggested that investment in flexible and spatially extensive social networks helped sustain mobile pastoralist communities and states in the past. This study explores the material dimensions of such social networks through an investigation of household textile...

  • Identifying Animal Management Strategies in Pre-domestication Contexts (2023)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Lisa Janz.

    This is an abstract from the "From the Altai to the Arctic: New Results and New Directions in the Archaeology of North and Inner Asia" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The concept of domestication highlights a form of human intervention in animal reproduction that is at the extreme in a continuum of human-animal relations. Despite the extreme nature of this category of interaction, domestication remains difficult to distinguish archaeologically and...

  • Imperial Impact: Population Dynamics and Political Landscapes of Inner Asia under the First Steppe Empire (2023)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Bryan Miller. Jamsranjav Bayarsaikhan.

    This is an abstract from the "From the Altai to the Arctic: New Results and New Directions in the Archaeology of North and Inner Asia" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper integrates survey, mortuary, and genetic research into a multidisciplinary and multiscalar consideration of the impact that large political regimes like empires have on the social landscapes of individual communities and whole regions. In the case of the first steppe empire...

  • Laying Down with Dogs: The Role of Canis familiaris in Mongolia and Transbaikal during the Xiongnu Period (2023)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Asa Cameron.

    This is an abstract from the "From the Altai to the Arctic: New Results and New Directions in the Archaeology of North and Inner Asia" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Xiongnu period (ca. 250 BC–AD 150) of Mongolia and Transbaikal marks a dramatic change in the frequency and treatment of domestic dogs (Canis familiaris) in the archaeological record. While this shift in burial and consumptive practices are indirectly acknowledged in the academic...

  • Melting Ice, High-Altitude Hunting, and Horse Use in the Mongolian Altai (2023)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only William Taylor. Isaac Hart. Jamsranjav Bayarsaikhan. Tumurbaatar Tuvshinjargal. Nicholas Jarman.

    This is an abstract from the "From the Altai to the Arctic: New Results and New Directions in the Archaeology of North and Inner Asia" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Around the globe, a rapidly warming climate is exposing organic materials preserved in permanent snow and ice features. In western Mongolia, artifacts melting from ice features in the Altai mountains demonstrate a millennia-long record of the use of high-altitude zones for hunting of...

  • Metallurgy, Shamanism, and Ideographic Currency in Bering Strait: Scythian Descent? (2023)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Owen Mason.

    This is an abstract from the "From the Altai to the Arctic: New Results and New Directions in the Archaeology of North and Inner Asia" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Late Holocene Bering Strait acted as a filter, marked by intermittent material and technological cross-strait transfers; first of obsidian, ca. 3000 BCE, storage or serving ceramics adopted ca. 1000 BCE, of metallurgic iron ca. 200 CE, rare cast-bronze objects ca. 1150 CE, armor...

  • Monuments in Bronze Age Mongolian Kinscapes (2023)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Emily Eklund.

    This is an abstract from the "From the Altai to the Arctic: New Results and New Directions in the Archaeology of North and Inner Asia" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Tim Ingold’s (1993) work “The Temporality of the Landscape” introduced us to the concept of taskscapes, in which an array of tasks, overlapping and interlocking, work to create a specific place in the larger landscape. I am now introducing another innovative “scape,” one used...

  • Pre-Colonial Hokkaido and East Asian Trade: Exchange and Identity Formation of the Okhotsk Culture (2023)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Erin Gamble.

    This is an abstract from the "From the Altai to the Arctic: New Results and New Directions in the Archaeology of North and Inner Asia" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This research explores ways precontact commodities trade networks, originating in distant nation-states and empires, can create the conditions to trigger changing social relations and novel identities far from market centers. I argue that a shift in the functional role of trade from...

  • Sowing the Seeds of Empire: New Insights into Xiongnu Agriculture and Agronomy (2023)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Christina Carolus.

    This is an abstract from the "From the Altai to the Arctic: New Results and New Directions in the Archaeology of North and Inner Asia" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Xiongnu period (ca. 250 BC–AD 150) was a particularly transformative time in the history of the eastern Eurasian steppe. Intensive study of the dimensions of sociopolitical, technological, subsistence, and material cultural transformation associated with the emergence of the...