Redefining Subsistence Practices and Strategies at the Local and Micro-regional Scales in the Context of Late Prehistoric Trans-Eurasian Food Globalization

Summary

The diffusion of metalworking, horse-drawn transport, and use of domesticated plants and animals across the Eurasian steppes and forest-steppes have dominated recent scholarly discussions of second millennium BCE socio-economic development. The term "globalization" is routinely used to characterize these early processes and key horizons of technological development. This paper draws on recent archaeological field research in the Southern Ural Mountains of the Russian Federation to emphasize the importance of modeling local trajectories of trade and exchange in addition to the resilience of local and micro-regional scale ecological adaptation and socio-economic strategy. This seven-year program of field research has provided the foundation for examining more effectively complex practices of food use as embedded within broader trends of subsistence practice, conflict and warfare, and pan-Eurasian technological development. Data from regional survey, settlement patterning, Zooarchaeology, Paleobotany, and stable isotopes from human and faunal remains will be drawn on to redefine late prehistoric subsistence practices and strategies in north central Eurasia.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• Food Globalisation in Prehistory

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