Radiocarbon-dated archaeological record of early first millennium B.C. mounted pastoralists in the Kunlun Mountains, China

Abstract

Pastoral nomadism, as a successful economic and social system drawing on mobile herding, long-distance trade, and cavalry warfare, affected all polities of the Eurasian continent. The role that arid Inner Asia, particularly the areas of northwestern China, Kazakhstan, and Mongolia, played in the emergence of this phenomenon remains a fundamental and still challenging question in prehistoric archaeology of the Eurasian steppes. The cemetery of Liushiu (Xinjiang, China) reveals burial features, bronze bridle bits, weaponry, adornment, horse skulls, and sheep/goat bones, which, together with paleopathological changes in human skeletons, indicate the presence of mobile pastoralists and their flocks at summer pastures in the Kunlun Mountains, ∼2,850 m above sea level. Radiocarbon dates place the onset of the burial activity between 1108 and 893 B.C. (95% probability range) or most likely between 1017 and 926 B.C. (68%). These data from the Kunlun Mountains show a wider frontier within the diversity of mobile pastoral economies of Inner Asia and support the concept of multiregional transitions toward Iron Age complex pastoralism and mounted warfare.

Genetic diversity of Ovis aries populations near domestication centers and in the New World

“…Kazakhstan holds a unique geographic position in terms of the flow and use of sheep genetic resources via pastoral nomadism since approximately 2500 B. C. (Wagner et al 2011) and proximity to the center of sheep domestication. Conversely, the United States has a relatively recent collection of genetic resources from a wide range of geographic regions, and these have been assessed on a within-country basis and in comparison to Brazilian breeds Paiva et al 2010Paiva et al , 2011.…”

‘You must keep going’ – Musculoskeletal system stress indicators of prehistoric mobile pastoralists in Western China

“…760/500 cal. BC (95% probability range: Wagner et al, 2011). Altogether, 52 earth pit tombs covered with a stone-veneered earth mound or stone circle have been excavated.…”

“…Preliminary demographic data and selected features of pathological disorders like strain and trauma of muscles, bones, and ligaments of the population buried at the site of Liushui, southern part of the Xinjiang region in western China, around 3000 years ago have been used to recognize activities like horse riding and archery practice from a very young age (Schultz et al, 2007;Gresky et al, 2008Gresky et al, , 2009Gresky et al, , 2012Wagner et al, 2011).…”

“…arts.ualberta.ca/project description) clearly demonstrates advantages of bioarchaeological research and the individual life history approach for better understanding Neolithic and Bronze Age hunteregatherer lifeways in two macro-regions of Eastern Asia (see Weber et al, 2010Weber et al, , 2013 and references therein). Li et al (2013) emphasize that application of the individual life history approach e a suite of laboratory and macroscopic methods which give detailed information about individuals through examination of their skeletal remains and provide insights into the variation of past human behavior at the individual and community level (Weber et al, 2010) e has a particularly high research potential in Western China, where extremely arid environments are favorable for preservation of organic material and detailed palaeopathological analysis of human skeletal remains (Wagner et al, 2011). Up to now, for a large part of Asia, comparatively few pathological investigations on the skeletal remains of past populations have been carried out.…”

Finding Greener Pastures: The Local Development of Agro-Pastoralism in the Ordos Region, North China.

“…Recent studies of early pastoralism in China have contributed to the study of pastoralism globally by investigating human adaptations to climatic change (D'Alpoim Guedes et al, 2014;D'Alpoim Guedes, 2015), as well as to the understanding the sociopolitical organization of early pastoral societies in Eurasia (Wagner et al, 2011). At the same time, the recovery of animal remains in China is increasingly becoming a systematic and problem-oriented discipline and more recent interdisciplinary studies of zooarchaeology have begun investigating issues such as salt production, bone tool production systems, and urban foodways (e.g.…”