Human-Environment Interactions: The Role of Foragers in the Development of Mobile Pastoralism in Mongolia's Desert-Steppe

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Fifty Years of Fretwell and Lucas: Archaeological Applications of Ideal Distribution Models" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

This paper presents a research design to investigate the role of foragers in the evolution of pastoralism in Mongolia’s desert-steppe. Past efforts to understand the origins of herding have been stymied by the "steppe and sown" dichotomy that perpetuates long held stereotypes of farmers and herders, and posits agriculture as a precondition for pastoralism. Recent perspectives, however, have revealed more complex evolutionary processes, helping to dismantle outdated views and expand our understanding the role of non-agricultural traditions (e.g., foraging). While studies have generated insights about foraging life in Mongolia, we still have scant information about how foragers contributed to the development of herding. Using archaeological and environmental data from on- going work at the Ikh Nart Nature Reserve in the Dornogovi Provence, the study will focus on land use and mobility patterns across the economic and social transition (ca. 4500 BP) as a way to understand the nature of change and implications for the development of Eurasian pastoralism. Working within the framework of evolutionary ecology and concepts of habitat suitability, the study will compare how foragers and herders distributed themselves within habitats, detecting differences in how, when, and why people moved, illuminating how people make decisions about existing environmental conditions.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Fifty Years of Fretwell and Lucas: Archaeological Applications of Ideal Distribution Models   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 23298