Diversity and Unity: Different Crop Consumption in East Tianshan Mountains, Northwest China

Summary

This is an abstract from the "From Tangible Things to Intangible Ideas: The Context of Pan-Eurasian Exchange of Crops and Objects" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The region of east Tianshan Mountains, located in east edge of Central Asia, has a diverse natural environment that is suitable for a variety of subsistence. The first millennium BC was a period with fluctuating climate and rapid cultural interactions in this region. This study conducted archaeobotanical studies on samples taken from different eco-zones, and refers to historical documents and ethnological materials to explore crop consumption during the first millennium BC. The result reveals barley is suited to the local environment of the eastern Tianshan Mountains, and a fit for local pastoral scheduling. Consequently, naked barley became one of the most popular crops in this region and predominated on the north slope of Tianshan. However, in the southern region, the agricultural system of multi-cropping predominated. That might have been a tactic to reduce risks and maximize the utilization of oases. Overall, continual agro-pastoralism is the most obvious feature of East Tianshan Mountains in the first millennium BC. Under varied environment and social institutions, the proportion of agriculture and pastoralism and the choice of cereal crops in this region are expected to show spatial and temporal variations.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• From Tangible Things to Intangible Ideas: The Context of Pan-Eurasian Exchange of Crops and Objects   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 24088