Iarte VI and Late Holocene Reindeer Remains from the Iamal Peninsula of Arctic Siberia

Nomokonova, Tatiana; Losey, Robert J.; Plekhanov, Andrei V.; McIntyre, Heather J.

doi:10.3368/aa.55.2.56

Cited by 10 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…Transporting numerous personal items bearing reindeer imagery to an important regional ritual site may also attest to the emerging importance of reindeer, including the importance of their relationships to the individuals depositing them at Ust’-Polui. Their abundance at the site is not remotely matched in any regional archaeological site, including those with tens of thousands of reindeer remains (Nomokonova et al 2018), nor those with remarkable permafrost preservation and dating to the period of large-scale reindeer pastoralism (e.g. Kardash 2013a, b).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The Iamal-Nenets region is a global centre of reindeer pastoralism (Klokov 2011), and in turn has been the focus of significant research on reindeer domestication (Anderson et al 2019; Fedorova 2000; 2006; Golovnev 1995; Golovnev et al 2016; Gusev et al 2016; Krupnik 1993; Losey et al 2020a; Nomokonova et al 2018; Røed et al 2020; Stépanoff 2017). Several lines of evidence have been used to suggest that reindeer domestication and transport first emerged in the region around 2200 years ago.…”

Section: Iamal's Domestic Reindeer and Ust’-poluimentioning

confidence: 99%

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Reindeer Imagery in the Making at Ust’-Polui in Arctic Siberia

Nomokonova

Losey

Федорова

et al. 2020

CAJ

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The history of reindeer domestication is a critical topic in the study of human-animal relationships across Northern Eurasia. The Iamal-Nenets region of Arctic Siberia, now a global centre of reindeer pastoralism, has been the subject of much recent research on reindeer domestication. However, tracking the beginnings of reindeer domestication in this region and elsewhere in Eurasia has proved challenging. Archaeological imagery is an under-utilized source of information for exploring animal domestication. In this paper we explore the abundant reindeer imagery found at the Iron Age site of Ust’-Polui in Iamal, dating from ~260 bce to ce 140. While reindeer were hunted in Siberia long before the occupation of Ust’-Polui, portable reindeer imagery appears abruptly at this time period, co-occurring at the site with equipment thought to be for training transport reindeer. Training and working with transport reindeer required long-term engagement with specific animals that became well known and precious to their human keepers. Creating, utilizing and depositing the reindeer imagery objects at Ust’-Polui was a way of acknowledging critical new working relationships with specific domestic reindeer.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Iamal's Domestic Reindeer and Ust’-poluimentioning

confidence: 99%

Reindeer Imagery in the Making at Ust’-Polui in Arctic Siberia

Nomokonova

Losey

Федорова

et al. 2020

CAJ

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“…Additional support for a relatively deep history of reindeer domestication in Iamal, potentially as early as 300 CE, is the sedimentary evidence for the small-scale holding of reindeer at Iarte VI (Figure 1; Anderson et al 2019). Note however that no artifacts or faunal remains from this period have been identified at Iarte VI-all such evidence, including the potential headgear there, dates to the 11 th century CE (Anderson et al 2019;Nomokonova et al 2018;Shiiatov and Khantemirov 2000). Overall, by as early as 260 BCE, reindeer were involved in transport along the northern fringes of the forest tundra of Northwest Siberia, and perhaps also in areas of the taiga and nearby tundra just a few centuries later.…”

Section: Synthesis Of Reindeer Domestication In Iamalmentioning

confidence: 93%

“…The objects described here came from the house pit excavations in the 1990s. Modeling of radiocarbon dates from the houses and faunal remains in the site's ditch feature span from ~1016 to 1122 CE (Nomokonova et al 2018). Iarte VI has also generated one of the largest reindeer assemblages in the Arctic, numbering just over 22,000 specimens (Nomokonova et al 2018;Vizgalov et al 2013:253-6).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Modeling of radiocarbon dates from the houses and faunal remains in the site's ditch feature span from ~1016 to 1122 CE (Nomokonova et al 2018). Iarte VI has also generated one of the largest reindeer assemblages in the Arctic, numbering just over 22,000 specimens (Nomokonova et al 2018;Vizgalov et al 2013:253-6). Iarte VI has been variously interpreted, including as a location inhabited by people largely reliant on relatively sizeable domestic reindeer herds (as many as 200 individuals) for transport and subsistence, to a central place from which wild reindeer were hunted, processed, and consumed, and transport involved some domestic reindeer (Anderson et al in 2019;Fedorova 2006;Gusev et al 2016;Nomokonova et al 2018).…”

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confidence: 99%

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Domestication as Enskilment: Harnessing Reindeer in Arctic Siberia

Losey

Nomokonova

Arzyutov

et al. 2020

J Archaeol Method Theory

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The study of reindeer domestication provides a unique opportunity to examine how domestication involves more than bodily changes in animals produced through selection. Domestication requires enskilment among humans and animals, and this process of pragmatic learning is dependent on specific forms of material culture. Particularly with the domestication of working animals, the use of such material culture may predate phenotypic and genetic changes produced through selective breeding. The Iamal region of Arctic Siberia is generating an increasingly diverse set of archaeological evidence for reindeer domestication that evidences these processes. Three early sites, Ust'-Polui, Tiutei-Sale I, and Iarte VI, contain artifacts proposed to be parts of headgear worn by transport reindeer, the earliest dating to just over 2000 years ago. Contemporary Nenets reindeer herders scrutinized replicas of these archaeological objects, and comparisons with historic reindeer harness parts from Arctic Russia were also made. Nenets consistently interpreted barbed L-shaped antler pieces from Iamal as headgear parts for training young reindeer in pulling sleds. Some types of swivels were also interpreted as transport reindeer headgear. Based on these consultations with Nenets and observations of their ongoing reindeer domestication practices, we argue that material things such as headgear, harnesses, and sleds are not merely technological means of using or controlling reindeer in transportation but

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Reconstructing patterns of domestication in reindeer using 3D muscle attachment areas

Siali,

Niinimäki,

Harvati

et al. 2023

Archaeol Anthropol Sci

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The use of reindeer has been a crucial element in the subsistence strategies of past Arctic and Subarctic populations. However, the spatiotemporal occurrence of systematic herding practices has been difficult to identify in the bioarchaeological record. To address this research gap, this study proposes a new virtual anthropological approach for reconstructing habitual physical activity in reindeer, relying on the protocols of the “Validated Entheses based Reconstruction of Activity” (VERA) method. Following blind analytical procedures, we focused on eight muscle attachment sites (“entheses”) in 36 reindeer free ranging in the wild, 21 specimens in captivity (zoo), and eight racing reindeer (habitual runners). Importantly, our analyses accounted for the effects of variation by subspecies, sex, age, and estimated body size. Our results showed clear differences across activity groups, leading to the development of discriminant function equations with cross-validated accuracies ranging from approximately 88 to 100%. The reliability of our functions was additionally confirmed using a blind test involving six zoo individuals not included in the initial dataset. Our findings support the use of the proposed approach for identifying domestication-related activities in zooarchaeological contexts, introducing a valuable tool for locating suspected domestication hotspots and elucidating the nature of past human-reindeer interactions.

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Iarte VI and Late Holocene Reindeer Remains from the Iamal Peninsula of Arctic Siberia

Cited by 10 publications

References 16 publications

Reindeer Imagery in the Making at Ust’-Polui in Arctic Siberia

Reindeer Imagery in the Making at Ust’-Polui in Arctic Siberia

Domestication as Enskilment: Harnessing Reindeer in Arctic Siberia

Reconstructing patterns of domestication in reindeer using 3D muscle attachment areas

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