Mobile Domiciles of the Eurasian Steppe: Archaeological Evidence of Possible Dwelling Space during the Early Iron Age

ABSTRACT

Very little precedent exists in Mongolia for excavating an ephemeral habitation site of prehistoric mobile pastoralists. This is due to an assumption that the kinds of nonpermanent structures constructed from perishable materials by mobile pastoralists (e.g., yurts) would be virtually undetectable in the archaeological record. Working in the Tarvagatai Valley of north-central Mongolia, the goal of the current research is to test the viability of methodological and analytical techniques used in the investigation of Palaeolithic hunter-gatherer habitations for the purpose of identifying a mobile pastoralist domicile of the Early Iron Age. The following study presents an overview of the methodology implemented during the excavation and the analysis used to identify what appear to be indications of one of the earliest mobile structures so far identified in the Mongolian steppe.

KEYWORDS:

• Mobile pastoralism
• nomadism
• Mongolian steppe
• mobile domiciles
• Xiongnu

Acknowledgments

The Tarvagatai Valley Project received immense support from the Mongolian Academy of Sciences and Yale University Department of Anthropology. This study was generously supported by the National Science Foundation, Grant No. 1443490 and Grant No. 1737687, the Wenner Gren Foundation, Grant No. 8947 and the Council on East Asian Studies at Yale University. We would like to thank William Honeychurch, Chunag Amartuvshin, A. Dudley Gardner, Bukhchuluun Dashzeveg, Frank Hole, Brent Buenger, Joshua Boyd, Gerelbadrakh Jamsranjav, and Joshus Wright for their insightful comments and assistance with this paper. In particular, we express our appreciation to the anonymous reviewers for their careful attention to this paper, which improved it substantially.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on Contributors

William Ralston Murl Gardner (Ph.D. 2016, Yale University) is a Postdoctoral Associate at Yale University. He is interested in the archaeology of mobile peoples with specific focus on the effect “movement” has on the sociopolitical and cultural development of lifeways dependent on mobility for sustaining food production.

Jargalan Burentogtokh (Ph.D. 2017, Yale University) is a Visiting Lecturer of Anthropology at Yale University. His current research focus is on the earliest mobile pastoralists of the Mongolian steppe and how the transition to a pastoral lifeway affected social and monumental landscapes of the Mongolian steppe during the 2nd millennium b.c.

ORCID

William Ralston Murl Gardner http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2650-2597

Jargalan Burentogtokh http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4350-8464