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New evidence for regional pastoral practice and social complexity in the Eastern Tianshan Mountains in the first millennium BCE.

ABSTRACT: Mobile pastoralism was a key lifeway in the Late Bronze and Iron Age of Northwest China and played a crucial role in the regional socio-cultural development, as well as the formation of transregional networks. In this paper we analyse the complete faunal assemblage from House F2 in Shirenzigou, on the Eastern Tianshan Mountains, in combination with radiocarbon dating and spatial analysis, to explore local animal resources exploitation strategies and related socio-economic implications. Our results show an intensive multipurpose caprine management, while the exploitation of other domestic taxa, cattle, horses and dogs, was limited. This pastoral economy was supplemented with some hunting. The differentiated use of space in F2 indicates that basic domestic tasks were carried out in the structure, however its position within the landscape and the predominance of bone tools related to warfare and socialization activities, suggests that it was not an ordinary dwelling, it may also have served as a watch post for the summer encampment within the gully. Our findings constitute an important contribution on the discussion on animal resources exploitation strategies and their relationship with evolving socio-economic complexity in the Eastern Tianshan region in the late first millennium BCE.

SUBMITTER: Wang Y

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10020425 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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New evidence for regional pastoral practice and social complexity in the Eastern Tianshan Mountains in the first millennium BCE.

Wang Yuxuan Y Monteith Francesca F Xi Tongyuan T Ren Meng M Li Daren D Hu Songmei S Wang Jianxin J Festa Marcella M Ma Jian J

Scientific reports 20230316 1

Mobile pastoralism was a key lifeway in the Late Bronze and Iron Age of Northwest China and played a crucial role in the regional socio-cultural development, as well as the formation of transregional networks. In this paper we analyse the complete faunal assemblage from House F2 in Shirenzigou, on the Eastern Tianshan Mountains, in combination with radiocarbon dating and spatial analysis, to explore local animal resources exploitation strategies and related socio-economic implications. Our resul ...[more]

PMID: 36927890

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Project description:Situated at a geographic crossroads, the eastern Tianshan Mountain region in northwest China is crucial to understanding various economic, social, and cultural developments on the Eurasian Steppes. One promising way to gain a better knowledge of ancient subsistence economy, craft production, and social change in the eastern Tianshan Mountain region is to study the artifact assemblages from archaeological contexts. Here, we present an analysis of 488 worked animal bones from the large site of Shirenzigou (ca. 1300-1 BCE), to date the largest assemblage of this kind uncovered in the eastern Tianshan Mountain region. We classified these worked bones into six categories, including "ritual objects", "ornaments", "tools", "worked astragali", "warfare and mobility", and "indeterminate". The identification of animal species and skeletal elements indicates that worked bones from Shirenzigou are characterized by a predominance of caprine products, particularly worked astragali, which is consistent with the large proportion of caprine fragments found in animal remains associated with food consumption. This demonstrates the contribution of caprine pastoralism to bone working activities at Shirenzigou. The making of most worked bones does not appear to have required advanced or specialized skills. Considering the absence of dedicated bone working space, alongside the variability in raw material selection and in dimensions of certain types of artifacts, we infer that worked bone production at Shirenzigou was not standardized. In terms of raw material selection and mode of production, Shirenzigou differed from their settled, farming counterparts in the Yellow River valley of northern China. In addition, along with the evidence for violence and horseback riding, the increasing use of bone artifacts associated with warfare and mobility during the late occupation phase of Shirenzigou reflects growing social instability and implies the likely emergence of single mounted horsemen, equipped with light armors, in the region during the late first millennium BCE. Our results provide new insights into animal resource exploitation and changing lifeways of early pastoral societies in the eastern Tianshan Mountain region, expanding our knowledge of the economic, social, and political milieu of late Bronze Age and early Iron Age eastern Eurasia.

Project description:500 years of ancient Near Eastern history from the earlier second millennium BCE, including such pivotal figures as Hammurabi of Babylon, Šamši-Adad I (who conquered Aššur) and Zimrilim of Mari, has long floated in calendar time subject to rival chronological schemes up to 150+ years apart. Texts preserved on clay tablets provide much information, including some astronomical references, but despite 100+ years of scholarly effort, chronological resolution has proved impossible. Documents linked with specific Assyrian officials and rulers have been found and associated with archaeological wood samples at Kültepe and Acemhöyük in Turkey, and offer the potential to resolve this long-running problem. Here we show that previous work using tree-ring dating to place these timbers in absolute time has fundamental problems with key dendrochronological crossdates due to small sample numbers in overlapping years and insufficient critical assessment. To address, we have integrated secure dendrochronological sequences directly with radiocarbon (14C) measurements to achieve tightly resolved absolute (calendar) chronological associations and identify the secure links of this tree-ring chronology with the archaeological-historical evidence. The revised tree-ring-sequenced 14C time-series for Kültepe and Acemhöyük is compatible only with the so-called Middle Chronology and not with the rival High, Low or New Chronologies. This finding provides a robust resolution to a century of uncertainty in Mesopotamian chronology and scholarship, and a secure basis for construction of a coherent timeframe and history across the Near East and East Mediterranean in the earlier second millennium BCE. Our re-dating also affects an unusual tree-ring growth anomaly in wood from Porsuk, Turkey, previously tentatively associated with the Minoan eruption of the Santorini volcano. This tree-ring growth anomaly is now directly dated ~1681-1673 BCE (68.2% highest posterior density range), ~20 years earlier than previous assessments, indicating that it likely has no association with the subsequent Santorini volcanic eruption.

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New evidence for regional pastoral practice and social complexity in the Eastern Tianshan Mountains in the first millennium BCE.

Publications

New evidence for regional pastoral practice and social complexity in the Eastern Tianshan Mountains in the first millennium BCE.

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