Long-Term Occupation and Seasonal Settlement of Eastern Eurasian Pastoralists at Begash, Kazakhstan

Frachetti, Michael; Mar'yashev, Alexei N.

doi:10.1179/009346907791071520

Cited by 57 publications

(31 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…Based on their construction, material culture and faunal assemblages, all are interpreted as mobile pastoralist campsites [11]. Seasonal oscillations in environmental aridity and pasture availability directly shaped the annual mobility orbits proposed for prehistoric pastoralists in the study regions [12,13].…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Early agriculture and crop transmission among Bronze Age mobile pastoralists of Central Eurasia

et al. 2014

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Archaeological research in Central Eurasia is exposing unprecedented scales of trans-regional interaction and technology transfer between East Asia and southwest Asia deep into the prehistoric past. This article presents a new archaeobotanical analysis from pastoralist campsites in the mountain and desert regions of Central Eurasia that documents the oldest known evidence for domesticated grains and farming among seasonally mobile herders. Carbonized grains from the sites of Tasbas and Begash illustrate the first transmission of southwest Asian and East Asian domesticated grains into the mountains of Inner Asia in the early third millennium BC. By the middle second millennium BC, seasonal camps in the mountains and deserts illustrate that Eurasian herders incorporated the cultivation of millet, wheat, barley and legumes into their subsistence strategy. These findings push back the chronology for domesticated plant use among Central Eurasian pastoralists by approximately 2000 years. Given the geography, chronology and seed morphology of these data, we argue that mobile pastoralists were key agents in the spread of crop repertoires and the transformation of agricultural economies across Asia from the third to the second millennium BC.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Early agriculture and crop transmission among Bronze Age mobile pastoralists of Central Eurasia

et al. 2014

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“…occupation at Tasbas, Begash stood as the earliest settlement in Semirech'ye (Frachetti and Mar'yashev, 2007). Begash is located along foothills (950 m asl) of the Koksu River valley, approximately~100 km southwest of Tasbas.…”

Section: Early Bronze Age Cremation In Semirech'yementioning

confidence: 99%

“…The greatest (permanent) architectural investment and material remains are found at elevations below Archaeological Research in Asia xxx (2015) xxx-xxx 1000 m. asl whereas sites at higher elevations may have contained more temporary shelters making them difficult for archeologists to locate. Settlement archeology along its lower mountain foothills (b 1000 m. asl) has also yielded more detailed reconstructions of presumed winter activity where animal husbandry was the dominant economic strategy, with little to no investment in crop agriculture (e.g., Frachetti and Mar'yashev, 2007;Frachetti et al, 2010a;Rogozhinsky, 2011). Less archeological excavation has focused on higher elevation campsites thus, to date, limited comparative data exists for relating summer and winter practices of Bronze Age groups, or at the very least the different lifestyles practiced across the piedmont zone (but see Panyushkina et al, 2010).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Burial ritual, agriculture, and craft production among Bronze Age pastoralists at Tasbas (Kazakhstan)

Doumani

Frachetti

Beardmore

et al. 2015

Archaeological Research in Asia

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a b s t r a c tThis article presents new archaeological research on the ritual and domestic life of pastoralists at the Bronze Age campsite Tasbas, Kazakhstan. We reconstruct the hitherto unrecorded economy of high mountain pastoralists who lived at the site from the mid-3rd to early 1st millennium B.C. We argue that within the broad dynamics of mountain pastoralism there is local variability as shown through multi-season residence, farming, and craft production. In bringing together multiple data sets to address how the site was used we 1) show that ceramics were locally produced with similar manufacture technology across eight centuries -which breaks significantly from the canonical cultural history and large-scale migration paradigms that have defined the regional archaeology for decades; 2) identify a new tradition of cremation ritual (3rd millennium B.C.), and; 3) present the earliest evidence (3rd millennium B.C.) for the local use of domesticated grains and then farming (2nd millennium B.C.) in northern Central Asia. We provide a unique case study to bear on debates concerning the relationship between long-term regional stability and technological innovations among early central Eurasian pastoralists.

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“…Dedicated survey and excavation in Kazakhstan, in the highland pastures of the Altai Mountains, has revealed numerous sites of prehistoric nomadic settlement, many with evidence of agricultural production (e.g. Frachetti & Mar'yashev 2007; Shulga 2015); looking beyond the most visible monuments is yielding fascinating results.…”

Section: Marvellous Minusinskmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘Monumental Myopia’: bringing the later prehistoric settlements of southern Siberia into focus

et al. 2020

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Long-Term Occupation and Seasonal Settlement of Eastern Eurasian Pastoralists at Begash, Kazakhstan

Cited by 57 publications

References 8 publications

Early agriculture and crop transmission among Bronze Age mobile pastoralists of Central Eurasia

Early agriculture and crop transmission among Bronze Age mobile pastoralists of Central Eurasia

Burial ritual, agriculture, and craft production among Bronze Age pastoralists at Tasbas (Kazakhstan)

‘Monumental Myopia’: bringing the later prehistoric settlements of southern Siberia into focus

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