Holocene Perspectives from the Gobi Desert: New Paleoethnobotanical and Geoarchaeological Analyses at Delger Khan Uul, Mongolia

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The archaeological site of Delger Khan Uul is located in southeastern Mongolia near the eastern Gobi Desert. Today, the climate is semi-arid with cold winters and warm summers, but the region has experienced dramatic changes since the beginning of the Holocene with intervals of warm and cool periods. Utilizing lake cores we can gauge climatic trends for the greater region and assess the external factors which may have influenced the local environment at Delger Khan Uul. Using samples taken from the excavations, we take a more refined look at the climate of Delger Khan Uul since the early Holocene, using phytolith analysis, grain size analysis, magnetic susceptibility, and mass spectrometry. Using this suite of methods and proxies alongside archaeological evidence of human occupation in this area, we characterize the long-term environmental changes and progression of landscapes in southeastern Mongolia with a particular focus on the impact of anthropogenic settlement.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)   •
• SAA 2021: General Sessions

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 33538