Finding karstic caves and rockshelters in the Inner Asian mountain corridor using predictive modelling and field survey

Abstract

The area of the Inner Asian Mountain Corridor (IAMC) follows the foothills and piedmont zones around the northern limits of Asia’s interior mountains, connecting two important areas for human evolution: the Fergana valley and the Siberian Altai. Prior research has suggested the IAMC may have provided an area of connected refugia from harsh climates during the Pleistocene. To date, this region contains very few secure, dateable Pleistocene sites, but its widely available carbonate units present an opportunity for discovering cave sites, which generally preserve longer sequences and organic remains. Here we present two models for predicting karstic cave and rockshelter features in the Kazakh portion of the IAMC. The 2018 model used a combination of lithological data and unsupervised landform classification, while the 2019 model used feature locations from the results of our 2017–2018 field surveys in a supervised classification using a minimum-distance classifier and morphometric features derived from the ASTER digital elevation model (DEM). We present the results of two seasons of survey using two iterations of the karstic cave models (2018 and 2019), and evaluate their performance during survey. In total, we identified 105 cave and rockshelter features from 2017–2019. We conclude that this model-led approach significantly reduces the target area for foot survey.

Mechanical properties of lithic raw materials from Kazakhstan: Comparing chert, shale, and porphyry

“…For the current study, we selected a total of 17 samples, 14 of which come from archaeological sites, while the remaining three are geological raw materials (Table 1). The geological samples were collected during the PALAEOSILKROAD project's field campaign conducted in 2018 and 2019 [58,61] under license No. 15008746 (12.05.2015) of the National Museum of the Republic of Kazakhstan based on a collaboration protocol between the Eberhard-Karls University of Tu ¨bingen and the National Museum.…”

Nazugum, a new 4000 year old rockshelter site in the Ili Alatau, Tien Shan

“…1). The site was located during the cave prospection mission of the PALAEOSILKROAD project in 2019 (Namen et al, 2020;Cuthbertson et al, 2021). It was named after an Uyghur girl who fled China and sought a refuge in this rockshelter from the Manchurian persecution in the 19 th century.…”

Early Holocene human occupations in the western Tian Shan (Central Asia): Insights from the Alpysbaev Cave

“…The site was discovered by Khasan Alpysbaev in the 1960s, however, he did not conduct any archaeological excavations. Our team revisited the cave during exploratory archaeological survey aimed at finding karstic caves and rockshelters using predictive modelling in 2019 (Cuthbertson et al, 2021). Since our cave and rockshelter database accumulated several localities with the Saryaigyr name, we decided to name the cave after Khasan Alpysbaev.…”