The Delgerkhaan uul Survey: Preliminary Results

Summary

This is an abstract from the "From the Altai to the Arctic: New Results and New Directions in the Archaeology of North and Inner Asia" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The paper reports on a full coverage intensive survey of a water rich region in the Southeast Gobi desert, Mongolia, which with the support of many excavations provide a robust chronological framework from the mid-Holocene to the historic Manchu period. Archaeological survey recorded an extensive and unique monumental landscape of the Eastern Steppe Bronze Age prone burial tradition alongside a longer contemporary habitation record. Together these demonstrate multiscale spatial complexity, asymmetric regional settlement patterns, and adaptation to the changing Gobi environment. The region contains a large Xiongnu (Late Iron Age) period cemetery complex, built without an extensive habitation system—a typical Gobi phenomenon. Surface artifacts and mortuary practices show continuity into the early medieval Turkic period and also a medieval landscape of extensive habitations and diverse monumental structures. Together these results provide a dense and rich dataset of regional archaeology at heart of arid Northeast Asia that cross-cuts traditional chronologies and both integrates larger Eurasian trends and resists them.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• From the Altai to the Arctic: New Results and New Directions in the Archaeology of North and Inner Asia   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36214.0