Early pastoral economies along the Ancient Silk Road: Biomolecular evidence from the Alay Valley, Kyrgyzstan (original) (raw)
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Acta Via Serica 8, p. 53–78., 2023
The paper presents some new results illustrating some developments related to the concept of the Silk Road and subsequent methodological reflections. New laboratory results of scientific analyses of plants, minerals, and human remains in combination with more conventional methods of research contribute to a better understanding of the multidirectionality of exchanges in Pre-and Protohistory. Unsuspected long-distance transfers of items, especially of metals (tin) and biological materials (plants, pathogens, etc.) are discovered. Adding ancient DNA and petroglyphs to the vexed question of the Indo-European migrations across Eurasia complexifies the familiar linguistic, historical, and archaeological research landscape. Recent excavations show the impact of the adoption of artistic elements adapted from the Achaemenid arts, far in the steppe world, and up to China. Multidirectional (including North-South lanes) and multidisciplinary approaches leave space and hope for more rigorous scientific modelizations for the archaeology of Eurasia and the Silk Road.
Arboreal crops on the medieval Silk Road: Archaeobotanical studies at Tashbulak
2018
During the first millennium A.D., Central Asia was marked by broad networks of exchange and interaction, what many historians collectively refer to as the ªSilk Roadº. Much of this contact relied on high-elevation mountain valleys, often linking towns and caravanserais through alpine territories. This cultural exchange is thought to have reached a peak in the late first millennium A.D., and these exchange networks fostered the spread of domesticated plants and animals across Eurasia. However, few systematic studies have investigated the cultivated plants that spread along the trans-Eurasian exchange during this time. New archaeobotanical data from the archaeological site of Tashbulak (800±1100 A.D.) in the mountains of Uzbekistan is shedding some light on what crops were being grown and consumed in Central Asia during the medieval period. The archaeobotanical assemblage contains grains and legumes, as well as a wide variety of fruits and nuts, which were likely cultivated at lower elevations and transported to the site. In addition, a number of arboreal fruits may have been collected from the wild or represent cultivated version of species that once grew in the wild shrubby forests of the foothills of southern Central Asia in prehistory. This study examines the spread of crops, notably arboreal crops, across Eurasia and ties together several data sets in order to add to discussions of what plant cultivation looked like in the central region of the Silk Road.
American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 2004
Numerous Bronze Age cemeteries in the oases surrounding the Täklamakan Desert of the Tarim Basin in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, western China, have yielded both mummified and skeletal human remains. A dearth of local antecedents, coupled with woolen textiles and the apparent Western physical appearance of the population, raised questions as to where these people came from. Two hypotheses have been offered by archaeologists to account for the origins of Bronze Age populations of the Tarim Basin. These are the “steppe hypothesis” and the “Bactrian oasis hypothesis.” Eight craniometric variables from 25 Aeneolithic and Bronze Age samples, comprising 1,353 adults from the Tarim Basin, the Russo-Kazakh steppe, southern China, Central Asia, Iran, and the Indus Valley, are compared to test which, if either, of these hypotheses are supported by the pattern of phenetic affinities possessed by Bronze Age inhabitants of the Tarim Basin. Craniometric differences between samples are compared with Mahalanobis generalized distance (d2), and patterns of phenetic affinity are assessed with two types of cluster analysis (the weighted pair average linkage method and the neighbor-joining method), multidimensional scaling, and principal coordinates analysis. Results obtained by this analysis provide little support for either the steppe hypothesis or the Bactrian oasis hypothesis. Rather, the pattern of phenetic affinities manifested by Bronze Age inhabitants of the Tarim Basin suggests the presence of a population of unknown origin within the Tarim Basin during the early Bronze Age. After 1200 B.C., this population experienced significant gene flow from highland populations of the Pamirs and Ferghana Valley. These highland populations may include those who later became known as the Saka and who may have served as “middlemen” facilitating contacts between East (Tarim Basin, China) and West (Bactria, Uzbekistan) along what later became known as the Great Silk Road. Am J Phys Anthropol, 2003. © 2003 Wiley-Liss, Inc.
Sarazm is an agricultural settlement located in the Zerafshan Valley of northwestern Tajikistan; it was occupied from the fourth to the end of the third millennia BC. Located on the northeastern edge of a chain of agricultural settlements (Namazga IV) that span the northern foothill ecotone of the Kopet Dag, Sarazm sat on a crossroads of exchange and interaction. Being at the eastern extremity of this chain of sedentary villages, Sarazm is the key site for understanding the eventual diffusion of agriculture north into the mountains and steppe. The main purpose of this article is to present a long-awaited (previously unpublished) macrobotanical data set analysed in the late 1980s by George Willcox. Domesticated seeds in the assemblage (wheat and barley) are important both in terms of understanding the northeastern spread of agriculture into Central Eurasia and illustrating the role of agriculture in the Early Bronze Age economy at Sarazm. Wild fruit remains (specifically Russian olive, hackberry, sea buckthorn berry, wild pistachio and cappers) attest to foraging practices.
Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 2023
Historical phenomena often have prehistoric precedents; with this paper we investigate the potential for archaeometallurgical analyses and networked data processing to elucidate the progenitors of the Southwest Silk Road in Mainland Southeast Asia and southern China. We present original microstructural, elemental and lead isotope data for 40 archaeological copper-base metal samples, mostly from the UNESCO-listed site of Halin, and lead isotope data for 24 geological copper-mineral samples, also from Myanmar. We combined these data with existing datasets (N = 98 total) and compared them to the 1000+ sample late prehistoric archaeometallurgical database available from Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Vietnam and Yunnan. Lead isotope data, contextualized for alloy, find location and date, were interpreted manually for intra-site, inter-site and interregional consistency, which hint at significant multi-scalar connectivity from the late second millennium BC. To test this interpretation statistically, the archaeological lead isotope data were then processed using regionally adapted production-derived consistency parameters. Complex networks analysis using the Leiden community detection algorithm established groups of artefacts sharing lead isotopic consistency. Introducing the geographic component allowed for the identification of communities of sites with consistent assemblages. The four major communities were consistent with the manually interpreted exchange networks and suggest southern sections of the Southwest Silk Road were active in the late second millennium BC.
Upper Paleolithic Siberian Migrations to the Near East via Silk Road
2022
The micro-blade stone-tool industry produced by the pressure technique that emerged in Siberia during the Late Upper Paleolithic Age, spread over wide areas in Eurasia. One of these spreading lines was via Silk Road. Micro-blade stone-tool industries traced from Southern Siberia to Northern Afghanistan at the end of the Pleistocene reached Zagros and Eastern Anatolia via Northern Iraq at the beginning of PPN. It is also proven by the results of genetic studies that the traces of migrations from Siberia reached the Near East. It has been calculated that Ancient North Asian peoples have a genetic contribution of 20-25% in the genetic cluster formed by genomes dated to PPN in Zagros region. Therefore, it has been understood that the carriers of the pressure-micro-blade technology which set out from Southern Siberia, are intertwined enough to transfer their genes to the Zagros region. The same situation is true for the Caucasian Hunter-Gatherers genetic cluster. It is well known that the amazing depicted-art and architectural style of the PPN Göbeklitepe Culture in Southeastern Anatolia emerged suddenly without pre-development process. There is no other dominant culture in the immediate vicinity that can lead this interesting development. In this case it should be emphasized that a dominant cultural influence came from outside created the PPN Göbeklitepe Culture by mixing with native Anatolian communities. In the circumstances we should look for the dominant culture candidate among the Ancient North Asian immigration groups that using the pressure technique.
Urban and nomadic isotopic niches reveal dietary connectivities along Central Asia's Silk Roads
Scientific Reports, 2018
The ancient 'Silk Roads' formed a vast network of trade and exchange that facilitated the movement of commodities and agricultural products across medieval Central Asia via settled urban communities and mobile pastoralists. Considering food consumption patterns as an expression of socioeconomic interaction, we analyse human remains for carbon and nitrogen isotopes in order to establish dietary intake, then model isotopic niches to characterize dietary diversity and infer connectivity among communities of urbanites and nomadic pastoralists. The combination of low isotopic variation visible within urban groups with isotopic distinction between urban communities irrespective of local environmental conditions strongly suggests localized food production systems provided primary subsistence rather than agricultural goods exchanged along trade routes. Nomadic communities, in contrast, experienced higher dietary diversity reflecting engagements with a wide assortment of foodstuffs typical for mobile communities. These data indicate tightly bound social connectivity in urban centres pointedly funnelled local food products and homogenized dietary intake within settled communities, whereas open and opportunistic systems of food production and circulation were possible through more mobile lifeways.