Abstract

Archaeological horse remains from Mongolia's late Bronze Age Deer Stone-Khirigsuur (DSK) culture present some of the oldest direct radiocarbon dates for horses in northeast Asia, hinting at an important link between late Bronze Age social developments and the adoption or innovation of horse transport in the region. However, wide error ranges and imprecision associated with calibrated radiocarbon dates obscure the chronology of early domestic horse use in Mongolia and make it difficult to evaluate the role of processes like environmental change, economic interactions, or technological development in the formation of mobile pastoral societies. Using a large sample of new and published radiocarbon dates, this study presents a Bayesian chronological model for the initiation of domestic horse sacrifice at DSK culture sites in Mongolia. Results reveal the rapid spread of horse ritual over a large portion of the eastern Steppe circa 1200 BCE, concurrent with the first appearance of draught horses in China during the late Shang dynasty. These results suggest that key late Bronze Age cultural transformationsspecifically the adoption of mobile pastoralism and early horseback riding-took place during a period of climate amelioration, and may be linked to the expansion of horses into other areas of East Asia.

While classic models for the emergence of pastoral groups in Inner Asia describe mounted, horse-borne herders sweeping across the Eurasian Steppes during the Early or Middle Bronze Age (ca. 3000-1500 BCE), the actual economic basis of many early pastoral societies in the region is poorly characterized. In this paper, we use collagen mass fingerprinting and ancient DNA analysis of some of the first stratified and directly dated archaeofaunal assemblages from Mongolia's early pastoral cultures to undertake species identifications of this rare and highly fragmented material. Our results provide evidence for livestock-based, herding subsistence in Mongolia during the late 3rd and early 2nd millennia BCE. We observe no evidence for dietary exploitation of horses prior to the late Bronze Age, ca. 1200 BCE-at which point horses come to dominate ritual assemblages, play a key role in pastoral diets, and greatly influence pastoral mobility. In combination with the broader archaeofaunal record of Inner Asia, our analysis supports models for widespread changes in herding ecology linked to the innovation of horseback riding in Central Asia in the final 2nd millennium BCE. Such a framework can explain key broad-scale patterns in the movement of people, ideas, and material culture in Eurasian prehistory. Horse domestication is widely recognized as a key transformative event in human prehistory. The initial domestication of horses has been linked to major changes in human mobility and social organization, particularly in Inner Asia 1. Horses have also been invoked to explain continent-scale population movements, such as the spread

The emergence of mobile herding lifeways in Mongolia and eastern Eurasia was one of the most crucial economic and cultural transitions in human prehistory. Understanding the process by which this played out, however, has been impeded by the absence of a precise chronological framework for the prehistoric era in Mongolia. One rare source of empirically dateable material useful for understanding eastern Eurasia’s pastoral tradition comes from the stone burial mounds and monumental constructions that began to appear across the landscape of Mongolia and adjacent regions during the Bronze Age (ca. 3000–700 BCE). Here, along with presenting 28 new radiocarbon dates from Mongolia’s earliest pastoral monumental burials, we synthesise, critically analyse, and model existing dates to present the first precision Bayesian radiocarbon model for the emergence and geographic spread of Bronze Age monument and burial forms. Model results demonstrate a cultural succession between ambiguously dated Afanasievo, Chemurchek, and Munkhkhairkhan traditions. Geographic patterning reveals the existence of important cultural frontiers during the second millennium BCE. This work demonstrates the utility of a Bayesian approach for investigating prehistoric cultural dynamics during the emergence of pastoral economies.

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1DNA recovery from ancient human remains has revolutionized our ability to 2 reconstruct the genetic landscape of the past. Ancient DNA research has benefited from the 3 identification of skeletal elements, such as the cochlear part of the osseous inner ear, that 4 provide optimal contexts for DNA preservation; however, the rich genetic information obtained 5 from the cochlea must be counterbalanced against the loss of valuable morphological 6 information caused by its sampling. Motivated by similarities in developmental processes and 7 histological properties between the cochlea and auditory ossicles, we evaluated the efficacy 8 of ossicles as an alternative source of ancient DNA. We demonstrate that ossicles perform 9 comparably to the cochlea in terms of DNA recovery, finding no substantial reduction in data 10 quality, quantity, or authenticity across a range of preservation conditions. Ossicles can be 11 sampled from intact skulls or disarticulated petrous bones without damage to surrounding 12 bone, and we argue that, when available, they should be selected over the cochlea to reduce 13 damage to skeletal integrity. These results identify a second optimal skeletal element for 14 ancient DNA analysis and add to a growing toolkit of sampling methods that help to better 15 preserve skeletal remains for future research while maximizing the likelihood that ancient DNA 16 analysis will produce useable results. 17 18 24 Briggs et al. 2010; Ginolhac et al. 2011; Skoglund et al. 2014) small quantities of degraded 25 DNA. While these methodological advances have contributed to an improvement in the quality 26 and quantity of paleogenomic data obtained from ancient human remains, all ancient DNA 27 4 research fundamentally depends upon access to biological material that has sufficient 28 biomolecular preservation. 29Skeletal tissue (i.e., bone or teeth) is the preferred biological material for human 30 ancient DNA analysis due to its ability to resist post-mortem degradation better than other 31 types of tissues, including skin and hair (Lindahl 1993; Smith et al. 2001 Smith et al. , 2003 Collins et al. 32 2002). Recent research has shown that not all bone elements are equally effective in 33 preserving DNA, however, and has identified the bone encapsulating the cochlea within the 34 petrous pyramid of the temporal bone (referred to henceforth as the 'cochlea') (Gamba et al.35 2014; Pinhasi et al. 2015), as well as the cementum layer in teeth roots (Damgaard et al. 2015; 36 Hansen et al. 2017) as especially DNA-rich parts of the skeleton. The use of these skeletal 37 elements that act as repositories for the long-term survival of DNA has proven to be particularly 38 important for the analysis of biological samples recovered from regions where high 39 temperatures and/or humidity increase the rate of molecular degradation and result in low 40 concentrations of damaged DNA with reduced molecular complexity (e.g., Broushaki et al. 41 2016; Lazaridis et al. 2016; Schuenemann et al. 2017; Skoglund et al. 2017; Fregel e...

From the American West to the steppes of Eurasia, the domestic horse transformed human societies, providing rapid transport, communication, and military power, and serving as an important subsistence animal. Because of the importance of oral equipment for horse riding, dentistry is an essential component of modern horse care. In the open grasslands of northeast Asia, horses remain the primary form of transport for many herders. Although free-range grazing on gritty forage mitigates many equine dental issues, contemporary Mongolian horsemen nonetheless practice some forms of dentistry, including the removal of problematic deciduous teeth and the vestigial first premolar ("wolf tooth"). Here, we present archaezoological data from equine skeletal remains spanning the past 3,200 y, indicating that nomadic dental practices have great antiquity. Anthropogenic modifications to malerupted deciduous central incisors in young horses from the Late Bronze Age demonstrate their attempted removal, coinciding with the local innovation or adoption of horseback riding and the florescence of Mongolian pastoral society. Horse specimens from this period show no evidence of first premolar removal, which we first identify in specimens dating to 750 BCE. The onset of premolar extraction parallels the archaeological appearance of jointed bronze and iron bits, suggesting that this technological shift prompted innovations in dentistry that improved horse health and horse control. These discoveries provide the earliest directly dated evidence for veterinary dentistry, and suggest that innovations in equine care by nomadic peoples 1150 BCE enabled the use of horses for increasingly sophisticated mounted riding and warfare.

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