This article publishes a new series of radiocarbon dates from Tell Yunatsite, Southern Bulgaria. Context-based excavations undertaken over a large surface area, as well as a small test trench, provided a long stratigraphic sequence (11 ‘building levels’) covering a large part of the Chalcolithic period in Thrace (5th millennium BCE). Bayesian statistics and Gaussian Monte Carlo Wiggle Matching were employed to achieve a fine chronology for the multilayered tell. Implications and problems on the application of the calibration curve for the Late and Final Chalcolithic in Bulgaria are also discussed.
Walled sites attributed to the Xiongnu steppe empire (2nd century B.C.-1st century A.D.) constitute the earliest investments in explicitly non-mortuary built environments among pastoralists of the Mongolian Steppe. These permanent constructions are important precedents to the medieval towns of subsequent steppe empires, yet very little of the complete layouts and surrounding remains of the large enclosures are understood. Our investigations of the walled site at Kherlen-Bars in eastern Mongolia are among the first surveys to fully document all aspects above and below ground across an entire Iron Age walled site area. In addition to detailed documentation of the large structures, our geomagnetic prospections and digital elevation modeling brought to light numerous small sub-surface and subtle-surface features that show such early walled sites, often deemed virtually empty, to be far more complex and diachronic in their formation processes and possible functions.
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