Exploring Monumental Landscapes: Geophysical and Geochemical Insights into Bronze Age Mobile Pastoralist Monuments in Mongolia

Summary

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

Monument construction has long been associated with the rise of early civilizations and states. Recent trends in anthropological archaeology have also identified the crucial role of monuments in processes of social integration among small, mobile populations. This poster will present results from a detailed geophysical and geochemical study of these important social dynamics, providing a critical new understanding of how monument construction and use reflected changing patterns of social organization, territoriality, and social integration of dispersed pastoralist communities in the Mongolian Late Bronze Age (1400 – 750 BCE). For the 2024 field season, two khirigsuur monumental complexes were selected within the American-Mongolian Tarvagatai Valley Project area to act as comparative sites for the implementation of an innovative research design employing complimentary geophysical and geochemical methodologies, including: (i) near surface geophysical surveys (fluxgate gradiometry, magnetic susceptibility, and electromagnetic conductivity) and (ii) soil geochemistry (multi-element analysis with portable XRF). The application of these remote sensing techniques, in coordination with more traditional archaeology surveying methods, provides an effective approach for examining monument construction and use during a dynamic period of social, economic, and political change in the late prehistoric period of the eastern Eurasian steppes

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): 53298