New Biomolecular Insights into Ancient Steppe Subsistence Economies: Transitions in Eastern Kazakhstan from the Early Bronze Age (c.3000 BCE) through the Saka Period (900 BCE - 500 CE)
Author(s): Jacob Kalodner
Year: 2025
Summary
This is an abstract from the "Stable Isotope Analysis in Global History" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.
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Bronze and Iron Age Eastern Kazakhstan, bordered in the northeast by the Altai-Sayan Mountains and the southeast by the Saur-Tarbagatai Mountains, lay along not only the Inner Asian Mountain Corridor (IAMC) but also within an open steppe corridor linking the eastern Eurasian steppe, western Eurasian steppe, and China. Given its geographic significance, the region has received renewed and significant archaeological attention in the last 5 years. We further this recent work through the application of a promising new combination of biomolecular methods that has produced high resolution dietary data in other parts of the Eurasian steppe. In this study, we examine human and faunal bulk stable isotopic (δ<sup>13</sup>C, δ<sup>15</sup>N) data and paleoproteomic data from human dental calculus together in order to assess long term variability in diet and subsistence economy in eastern Kazakhstan starting from the Early Bronze Age and through the Iron Age (c. 3000 BCE - 500 CE), a period spanning the introduction of domesticates to the intensification of subsistence strategies. These multiproxy dietary data are put into dialogue with current perspectives on the development of social and economic complexity in Bronze and Iron Ages in order to expand our understanding of this transformative period of Kazakh prehistory.
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Cite this Record
New Biomolecular Insights into Ancient Steppe Subsistence Economies: Transitions in Eastern Kazakhstan from the Early Bronze Age (c.3000 BCE) through the Saka Period (900 BCE - 500 CE). Jacob Kalodner. Presented at The 90th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. 2025 ( tDAR id: 509825)
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Abstract Id(s): 53327