Monuments in Bronze Age Mongolian Kinscapes

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.

Tim Ingold’s (1993) work “The Temporality of the Landscape” introduced us to the concept of taskscapes, in which an array of tasks, overlapping and interlocking, work to create a specific place in the larger landscape. I am now introducing another innovative “scape,” one used increasingly by Indigenous scholars as a lens through which to understand an array of past and present, overlapping and interlocking, relationships between humans but also nonhumans. Kinscapes, as described by Métis scholar Brenda Macdougall (2017), are networks of relations that work to connect communities to specific places across time and space. The Late Bronze Age in Mongolia was a dynamic period in prehistory, often characterized by the emergence of stone monuments across the landscape. Constructed and used by small, dispersed mobile pastoralist groups, the function of these prominent structures has been actively debated. Previous research has led some to suggest that these cultural markers indicated the rise of elites, while others argue they represent the integration of communities. Through an application of kinscapes to these monuments, we work to gain a new perspective regarding their function, in which communities and monuments are in relational dialogue—each helping the other construct the social landscapes surrounding 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): 37158.0