Feeding a Steppe Garrison: Biomolecular Insights into Food Remains from Medieval Mongolia

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

This research is the first of its kind to be conducted on Medieval potshards from Mongolia and China (10-14 centuries CE). It analyzes pottery vessels found at garrison sites associated with lines of walls and border demarcation that were constructed by the Liao (916-1125 CE) and Jin (1115-1234 CE) dynasties. It enables us to trace the food remains of the people at those garrisons, revealing the daily consumption of the people who built and operated the wall system. It identifies domesticated plants, particularly millet, as a significant food source for them. The lipid preservation of the shards is exceptional, with a 100% success rate and more than 80% containing biomarker for common millet. This, alongside various types of millets detected archaeologically, suggest that millet was a primary food resource of these population and was likely cultivated locally in the steppe. It suggests a diet including both cultivated grains and animal sources (domesticated, hunted and fished). It sheds new light on the food habits and economic base of these garrison communities at both local and regional levels. ***This presentation will include images of human remains.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 52664