Adaptive Strategies of Foragers and Early Herders in Mongolia's Desert-Steppe: Implications for Understanding Social-ecological Dynamics, the Development of Food Production, and the Study of Long-Term Social Change

Summary

This is an abstract from the "New Directions in Mongolian Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

This paper presents preliminary findings from ongoing research on the development of pastoralism in Mongolia’s semiarid desert-steppe. The project involves a multiscale investigation of human-environment interactions, specifically the relationship between climate change and land use, and how adaptive strategies impacted natural and social environments during the transition from a foraging economy to herding (ca. 4000 BP). Recent archaeological excavations at the Ikh Nart Nature Reserve in southeastern Mongolia have identified several archaeological sites dating to this important economic transition. Ongoing geoarchaeological work contextualizes these finds, revealing evidence for increased aridification and decimation of wetlands during this economic shift. Future analyses will focus on defining the relationship between climate change and human impacts on the landscape. These data will be combined with recent landscape level investigations to assess settlement mobility prior to, during, and after this transition as a way to understand adaptive strategies of foragers and early herders, including differences in how, when, and why people moved, illuminating how people made decisions about changing environmental conditions. Examining the nature and timing of these strategies can help to identify factors that lead to sustainable and lasting systems, or alternatively to abrupt alterations or reorganization of social and economic systems.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)   •
• New Directions in Mongolian Archaeology

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 33108