Quantifying Ritual Funerary Activity of the Late Prehistoric Southern Kanas Region (Xinjiang, China)

Abstract

Identifying peaks in anthropogenic activity in a landscape is an important starting point for understanding past social dynamics in the longue durée. Through intensive surveys and remote sensing surveys of the Heiliutan Basin (Heiliutan Dacaoyuan 黑流滩大草原) in the southern Kanas Region (Kanasi 喀纳斯), Xinjiang, China, a high-resolution dataset for over 4000 years of material culture is established. The complete coverage of the area of interest allows for the quantification of ritual funerary activity based on the number of constructed monuments per century. The data show that the intensity of ritual funerary activity was very low and only left marginal traces in the landscape from the Eneolithic Age to the Late Bronze Age. During the Early Iron Age (ca. 850-200 B.C.E.), the basin became a center for construction of burials for social elites of nomadic tribes and the area was rapidly transformed into a landscape of the dead. The Late Iron Age (starting ≈200 B.C.E.) saw a decline of ritual funerary activities in the basin as it became an unimportant side scene to the cultural developments of the wider region.

Living Together, Living Apart: Residential Structures in Late Bronze Age Shirenzigou, Xinjiang

“…This strategic positioning likely added symbolic meaning to the structure, perhaps even serving as a social marker recognizable by nomadic pastoral groups from afar. This is in line with previous archeological and geomorphological research across Xinjiang, which has shown that during the Bronze and Iron Ages, special buildings devoted to collective ceremonies and rituals were strategi-cally placed in locations like mountain peaks, open valleys, and occasionally alluvial fans, chosen for their ecological, climatic, environmental, and socio-political and symbolic significance [112][113][114]. Centripetal structures, which have been identified across the Eastern Tianshan region, were located in similar settings.…”

Cultures in Contact. Central Asia as Focus of Trade, Cultural Exchange and Knowledge Transmission

“…Ongoing dendrochronological studies will clarify the relationship. The current evidence points to the construction of both monuments within one or two generations (Zaitseva et al 2007;Caspari et al 2020a). Monumental architecture is novel in the narrow geographic frame of the Uyuk Valley in the Early Iron Age.…”

“…3). Radiocarbon dates, later in combination with wiggle matching, situated the burial mound in the 9th century BCE (Caspari et al 2020a). Further geophysical and remote sensing research clarified the peripheral context of the monument, revealing a large number of stone circles around the main mound (Fig.…”

“…Wright (2012) argues for a function of khirigsuur monuments as social mechanisms with a communicative role in the landscape and without the implicit need for an elite as a catalyst for their construction. Another explanatory approach recently applied to Bronze and Iron Age monuments in Mongolia and Xinjiang is cost signalling theory (Wright 2017;Caspari 2020a), stating that "the building and modification of diverse types of stone monuments and the longterm development of monumental landscapes constituted costly signals that communicated information about the size and organization of communities and the depth and strength of the connections of The Earliest "Scythians" in Tuva and the World Beyond 595 their elite lineages with the increasingly far-reaching social networks of this period" (Wright 2017: 547). Radiocarbon dating is also creating an impact on this discussion, with a recent study finding that the construction of a large Late Bronze Age khirigsuur in Mongolia likely extended over a period of 50 years and might have been completed with the exclusive use of local resources and labour (Zazzo et al 2019).…”

Seasonal movements of Bronze Age transhumant pastoralists in western Xinjiang

“…Bronze Age stone-based habitation sites might be far more widespread than previously assumed. This type of monument extends into northern Xinjiang [23,24], Kazakhstan [25], the Russian Altai and Tuva Republic, although there is an ongoing debate whether smaller versions are connected to seasonal habitation [26] or should rather be interpreted within a ritualistic framework [27,28]. Archaeologically, investment in construction of stone houses is often taken to indicate permanent settlement, but this is clearly not the case in the Bortala Valley.…”