A Multiscalar Geospatial Study of Bronze Age Landscapes in the Trans-Urals

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Steppe by Steppe: Advances in the Archaeology of Eastern Eurasia" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The Late Bronze Age (2100–1400 BCE) of the Ural-Tobol interfluve saw the emergence and decline of proto-urban fortified settlements occupied by pastoralists and metallurgists. These sites have been interpreted as centers for military defense, ritual-political nodes, strategic centers to protect natural resources or avoid environmental hazards, and aggregations of metallurgists or other craftspeople. By 1700 BCE, communities began to abandon these sites and adopted a less-centralized settlement pattern. Archaeologists still have not determined the extent to which shifts in metallurgical production, ecological change, inter-settlement conflict, and internal social change influenced this process. To better understand the process of centralization and subsequent disaggregation, I present the early stages of a multiscalar geospatial study that traces the layouts of Bronze Age settlements, as well as landscape use 2100–1400 BCE. I will first discuss the fortified site of Kamysty, Kazakhstan, and the results of handheld lidar and GPR scanning in the summer of 2023. I then expand my scope to the entire Kamysty-Ayat River Valley, using satellite images to identify potential Bronze Age sites and ecological features. Finally, I discuss novel approaches to studying the broad settlement system of the Ural-Tobol interfluve, utilizing a large satellite image dataset and cloud-computing technology.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Steppe by Steppe: Advances in the Archaeology of Eastern Eurasia   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 39263.0