Divergent Paths, Shared Histories: Examining Archaeological Trends from the Caucasus to Mongolia

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ira Schwartz.

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Hannah Chazin.

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Asa Cameron.

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Moses Akogun.

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bryan Hanks.

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,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tekla Schmaus.

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lisa Janz.

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lara Fabian.

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dor Heimberg.

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Charlotte Littler-Klein.

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. Cattle domestication is well understood in Europe and the Near East, however the same cannot be said for East Asia. While cattle were long thought to have been introduced from Western Eurasia, increasing evidence suggests that the management of indigenous aurochs predated this introduction...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christina Carolus.

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.