Wetlands and Grasslands: Habitat Choice of Hunters and Herders across the Transition to Mobile Pastoralism in Mongolia’s Desert-Steppe

Summary

This is an abstract from the "The Archaeology of Wetlands" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Paleoclimate studies across northeast Asia document a pronounced drying and cooling trend across desert and desert-steppe environments around 6,000 years ago, intensifying between 4500 and 4000 BP. While conditions led to the deterioration of lake and wetland habitats, past archaeological research based on museum collections and a limited number of excavated sites suggests that Neolithic (ca. 8000–5500 BP) foraging communities intensified use of remaining wetland environments through high residential mobility, a trend that continued into the Bronze Age as herding practices were first introduced (ca. 4500 BP). The continuation of wetland focused settlement strategies during the early stages of pastoralism is thought to signal the gradual, in situ development of herding, however, recent multiscale research in Mongolia’s desert-steppe has identified subtle shifts in mobility and land use that signal a more abrupt change in habitat choice, including prioritization of upland grasslands and productive winter vegetation at the expense of lowland wetlands. We propose that the resulting population consolidation increased levels of unpredictability as people vied for scarce resources and contended with increasing rates of social interaction, patterns that fostered adaptations that came to define Eurasian mobile pastoralism including high residential mobility, long distance connections, and social differentiation.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• The Archaeology of Wetlands   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 39402.0