Agricultural production in the Central Asian mountains: Tuzusai, Kazakhstan (410–150<scp>b.c.</scp>)

Spengler, Robert N.; Chang, Claudia; Tourtellotte, Perry A.

doi:10.1179/0093469012z.00000000037

Cited by 71 publications

(62 citation statements)

References 23 publications

(26 reference statements)

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“…The possibility that the Tasbas grains are foxtail millet is further supported by the phytolith work of Beardmore (Doumani et al 2015), who notes that both millets are present in the phytoliths. Carbonized remains of foxtail millet have been recovered from the Iron Age site of Tuzusai, dating to 410-150 cal BC (Spengler et al 2013a; Fig. 4f).…”

Section: Broomcorn Milletmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…Our sample size for sites and barley remains from Central Asia is still much smaller than the data base used by Lister and Jones (2013) for Europe; however, it seems likely that there is a gradual shift toward naked phenotypes in Central Asia. We have very few paleoethnobotanical assemblages from the Iron Age in Central Asia; however, Tuzusai is almost exclusively dominated by hulled barley (Spengler et al 2013a). In contrast to the trend toward hulled barley in Europe and a possible late switch to hulled forms in Central Asia, in East Asia (especially Tibet) naked varieties became dominant.…”

Section: Naked and Hulled Barleymentioning

confidence: 99%

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Agriculture in the Central Asian Bronze Age

2015

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By the late third/early second millennium BC, increased interconnectivity in the mountains of Central Asia linked populations across Eurasia. This increasing interaction would later culminate in the Silk Road. While these populations are typically lumped together under the title of 'nomads', a growing corpus of data illustrates how diverse their economic strategies were, in many cases representing mixed agropastoral systems. These Central Asian low-investment agropastoralists are responsible for connecting the great centers of plant domestication, and through a process of experimentation and exchange shaped economies across the Old World. In this article, I synthesize the evidence for the movement of agricultural technology through this region, which ultimately brought southwest Asian and East Asian crops together for the first time. By the Late Bronze Age, a specific package of agricultural crops had developed across the entire mountain corridor, including broomcorn millet, peas, naked six-row barley, and highly compact free-threshing wheat. Each of these crops has a distinct narrative, and I approach the topic of their spread individually. I also show that agriculture did not spread across the steppe during the Bronze Age and that crops cultivated in the forest-steppe of Eastern Europe were distinct from those of the mountain corridor.

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Section: Broomcorn Milletmentioning

confidence: 98%

Section: Naked and Hulled Barleymentioning

confidence: 99%

Agriculture in the Central Asian Bronze Age

2015

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“…This argument, or a similar one, was made by Miller (1984) while working in southwest Asia and later by Klinge and Fall (2010) on the Iranian plateau, who reconstruct human/environmental impacts. Although in an arbitrary category, high counts of unidentifiable seed fragments in an assemblage or generally fragmentary seeds have also been used as another supporting line of evidence to suggest that the prime means of seed incorporation was dung burning (Spengler et al 2013a). However, determining the degree of fragmentation is qualitative and relies largely on the confidence level of the sorter; the quality of preservation is also often due to later taphonomic processes rather than mastication and digestion by ruminants.…”

Section: Identifying a Dung Burning Signaturementioning

confidence: 99%

“…3, as well as western Central Asia (Anthony et al 2005;Rühl et al 2015). Therefore, it is not surprising that there has been some inquiry into whether they could represent human foraging practices; however, as I noted above, disentangling (Spengler et al 2013a); and the experimental dung burning data from Spengler et al (2013b) a The percentage of the wild seeds represented by Chenopodium at Tasbas is low because 2,335 Vaccaria seeds were recovered, presumably preserving through the digestive process as well Fig. 3 Pie charts displaying the data from Table 1 human and herd animal foraging practices is often impossible when dung burning is considered.…”

Section: Archaeobotanical Chenopodium Seeds In Central Asiamentioning

confidence: 99%

Dung burning in the archaeobotanical record of West Asia: where are we now?

Spengler

2018

Veget Hist Archaeobot

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In the early 1980s Naomi Miller changed the field of palaeoethnobotany; her research into whether the ancient seed eaters of southwest Asia were human or herbivore opened an ongoing debate over the impact that burning of animal dung had on the formation of archaeobotanical assemblages, and how researchers can differentiate between human and animal food remains. As the number of systematic archaeobotanical studies across West Asia and many other parts of the world increase, we are continually confronted with the question of the significance of dung burning. Herd animal dung is the dominant fuel source in many parts of West Asia today and the high densities of seeds of wild plants in archaeobotanical assemblages suggest that people were using dung as fuel across Inner Asia for millennia. Seed assemblages that represent herd animal dung are assisting scholars in understanding palaeoecology and herd animal diet in the past as well as human economy and pasturing practices. However, interpreting these assemblages is not always simple and there are predictable biases that need to be taken into account, notably an overrepresentation of endozoochoric seeds (seeds dispersed through animal ingestion). In West Asia, the most prominent of such seeds in dung assemblages are from the Amaranthaceae family, notably Chenopodium.

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“…Cross-culturally the characterization of pastoral economics in the archaeological record is recognized as being particularly difficult, and archaeologists have used architectural, spatial, archaeobotanical, and zooarchaeological evidence to understand this phenomenon worldwide (e.g. Capriles and Tripcevich, 2016;Chang and Koster, 1986;Frachetti, 2012;Hammer, 2014;Honeychurch and Makarewicz, 2016;McClure, 2015;Spengler, et al 2013b).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%