Ecotopes and Herd Foraging Practices In the Steppe/Mountain Ecotone of Central Asia During the Bronze and Iron Ages

Abstract

Eurasian mobile pastoralists living in semiarid environments focus on specific locations on the landscape where pasture resources and water are available. Ecotones –or intermediary zones between the mountain and steppe environments– create mosaic landscapes composed of forage-rich patches and other discrete enclaves of useful biota for pastoralist communities. Ecotopes (ecological patches) provide vital resources for the herding systems used in Central Asia today as well as in the past. We document and discuss wild seed composition of archaeobotanical samples from the Bronze and Iron Age site of Begash in southeastern Kazakhstan noting that much of the archaeobotanical assemblage represents carbonized animal dung, which is currently and historically used as fuel in this region by mobile pastoralists. The seeds offer a window into prehistoric herding patterns and provide a nuanced view of prehistoric land use, social interaction, and community formation across discrete ecological nodes in the Bronze and Iron Ages.

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

“…Chenopodium spp. was also noted as the most abundant seed category in the assemblage, represented by 641 seeds or seed fragments (roughly 50% of the total assemblage), despite the fact that it was not overly common in the general landscape around the site (Spengler et al 2013b) (discussed more below).…”

“…The samples from the first midden deposit contained carbonized wood as well as 764 charred seeds, of which only 16 were from domesticated plants (Miller 1984 (Hastorf and Wright 1998). Spengler et al (2013b) conducted a similar experiment in eastern Kazakhstan; they collected 20 l of cattle dung from the area around a modern herder's pens near Taldy-Kurgan and burned it in an enclosed fire pit. The Taldy-Kurgan dung burning experiment required about three hours to burn the dung down to 18.51 g of ash.…”

“…While working on archaeobotanical material from the site of Begash, Kazakhstan, from occupation layers dating between the late 3rd and 1st millennia bc, Spengler et al (2013b) argued that the majority of the wild seeds in the assemblage came from the burning of dung as fuel, despite the fact that there were no remains of articulated dung found in the entire assemblage. They made seven observations, relating to similarities between their experimental study and actual archaeobotanical assemblages from the region; they all had: (1) high frequencies of seeds of herbaceous plants; (2) small seeds < 2 mm; (3) low abundance of wood; (4) similarities in the actual seed categories present; (5) similarities in which categories were abundant; (6) presence of partially carbonized and uncarbonized seeds mixed in with carbonized ones (although uncarbonized seeds rarely preserve archaeologically) and (7) a high level of fragmentation of seeds and fruits (Spengler et al 2013b).…”

“…They made seven observations, relating to similarities between their experimental study and actual archaeobotanical assemblages from the region; they all had: (1) high frequencies of seeds of herbaceous plants; (2) small seeds < 2 mm; (3) low abundance of wood; (4) similarities in the actual seed categories present; (5) similarities in which categories were abundant; (6) presence of partially carbonized and uncarbonized seeds mixed in with carbonized ones (although uncarbonized seeds rarely preserve archaeologically) and (7) a high level of fragmentation of seeds and fruits (Spengler et al 2013b).…”

“…To this end, archaeobotanical assemblages from Central Asia tend to be dominated by hard-coated seeds like Chenopodium or Lithospermum (for examples, see Spengler 2013;Spengler et al 2013a, b). However, some soft-coated seeds are often reported, such as Hyoscyamus from the sites of Begash (Spengler 2013) and Tuzusai (Spengler et al 2013b) in Kazakhstan. While the abundance of seeds with hard testae helps support the argument that most of the wild seeds in Central Asian archaeobotanical assemblages are the result of dung burning, there are two other factors to consider: (1) the preservation of hard testae is also biased by taphonomic processes; and (2) hard seed coats are also an adaptation to dry environments and plants that produce them are therefore abundant in many regions of West Asia.…”