Organised by: Dr. M. Mashkour (CNRS, France) and Dr. M. Tengberg (Natural History Museum, France)
mashkour@mnhn.fr
margareta.tengberg@mnhn.fr
Location: Room 612 (6th floor) of the Institute of Archaeology, UCL.
Time: Thursday 15th April
The purpose of this workshop is to promote an integrated approach to ancient subsistence systems by joining archaeobotanical and archaeozoological data. For this meeting, we have chosen to focus on the Iranian Plateau and southern Central Asia. These regions have been investigated more systematically during the last decades from a bioarchaeological point of view. However, there have so far been few occasions of exchange of scientific views between specialists, especially in an integrated form. We propose to center the debate on issues concerning the interaction of human societies and natural resources, wild or domesticated. The organization of agro-pastoral activities (mobile, sedentary), their adaptation to natural constraints (climate, topography), their impact on the environment as well as phenomenon of domestication and diffusion will thus form the principal themes treated in this workshop. The subjects to be covered in this workshop include:
- Subsistence systems
- Societal organization in relation to the exploitation of resources
- Plant-Animal economies
- Agro-pastoral practices
- Bioarchaeological methods (archaeozoology, archaeobotany)
| Time | Name | Paper Title |
|---|---|---|
| 09.20 | Mashkour | Introduction to the workshop |
| 09:35 | Miller | Plants, animals and people: the eternal triangle |
| 10:10 | Meadow | The development and elaboration of agro-pastoralism in the Indo-Iranian borderlands and adjoining areas |
| 10:45 | COFFEE | COFFEE |
| 11.15 | Harris | Neolithic subsistence systems and the beginnings of agriculture in South-west Central Asia |
| 11.40 | Ponel et al | First palaeo-entomological investigations in Iran (NW highlands): implications for natural environmental changes and human activities during the middle and late Holocene |
| 12.05 | Berthon et al | Bio-archaeological investigations at Ovçelar Tepesi, Azerbaïdjan |
| 12.30 | All | Discussion |
| 12.55 | LUNCH | LUNCH |
| 14.00 | Kasparov | The relationship between the seasonality of agricultural techniques and modes of animal husbandry in the Neolithic of south Turkmenistan |
| 14.30 | Tengberg | Collecting, hunting, cultivating and herding in north-eastern Iran and southern Turkmenistan from the Chalcolithic to the Iron Age |
| 14:55 | Mashkour | Subsistence economies in the Halil Rud Basin: bio-archaeological studies at Konar Sandal south and north |
| 15.20 | All | Discussion and Conclusion of the workshop |
| 15.45 | COFFEE | COFFEE |
Workshop Abstracts
Refuse disposals in the Chalcolithic pits of Ovchular Tepesi (Nakhchivan, Azerbaijan)
Mr Rémi Berthon (Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel, Germany and UMR 7209, MNHN, France)
Zsófia Kovács (University of Debrecen, Hungary)
Wim Van Neer (Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, Belgium)
George Willcox (CNRS, France)
Margareta Tengberg (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, France)
Thomas Cucchi (CNRS, France)
The site of Ovchular Tepesi is located at the top of a natural hill in the valley of the Arpaçay River (Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic, Azerbaijan). This settlement is composed of Late Chalcolithic (LC) and Early Bronze Age (EBA) occupations layers. The site has been excavated since 2006 within the frame of a French-Azeri joint project.
The scope of this paper is to present the faunal and botanical material from pits of the earliest Late Chalcolithic occupation layer. This layer is characterized by semi-subterranean houses and associated pits. The houses as well as the pits were dug into the natural deposits of the hill. Occupation layers belonging to this period have been found throughout the excavated area (ca. 1ha). According to 14C dates, this layer is dated between 4360 and 3960 BC (cal.). The pits contain faunal and botanical remains as well as lithic, bone and ceramic artefacts.
The soil excavated in the pits has been floated in order to collect the charred remains. Then the heavy fraction has been sieved through an 8mm, 2mm and 1mm mesh. Up to now, more than 500 liters of pit-soil has been processed, it yielded an important collection of mammal remains (including rodents, mainly mice mus musculus sp.) and fish remains, as well as botanical remains.
The aim of this paper is to investigate, through the study of botanical and faunal remains, the nature of the occupation at this site, the subsistence system, and the relation of this community with its environment.
Neolithic subsistence systems and the beginnings of agriculture in south-west Central Asia
Mr Pr David Harris (Institute of Archaeology, University College London)
The results of environmental–archaeological investigations undertaken in the 1990s have provided new evidence of agro-pastoral activities at the early Neolithic site of Jeitun (Djeitun) at the junction of the Karakum desert and the Kopetdag piedmont in southern Turkmenistan, and they have helped to answer the questions of when and how agriculture began in south-west Central Asia. Excavations at Jeitun by Soviet archaeologists in the late 1950s and early 1960s revealed the remains of a small (0.7 ha) settlement of mudbrick houses, but plant remains were not systematically recovered, nor was the occupation radiocarbon dated. A major objective of the new excavations at Jeitun was to obtain, identify and directly date plant remains by the AMS radiocarbon method, and to add to the evidence of animal exploitation obtained during the previous excavations. This contribution will address three main topics. First, the new bioarchaeological data and radiocarbon chronology will be summarized and Jeitun's subsistence economy and occupation described. Secondly, the probable relations of Jeitun to other Neolithic agro-pastoral and hunter–gatherer sites in the region will be outlined. Thirdly, the fundamental question of whether the transition to agriculture was an indigenous or exogenous process will be examined by asking whether, in the light of available biogeographical, genetic and archaeological evidence, the crops and domestic animals recorded at Jeitun-Culture sites are likely to have been domesticated locally or introduced. In conclusion, a hypothesis will be presented that invokes environmental changes and cultural processes to suggest how agro-pastoralism began in the region.
The relationship between the seasonality of agricultural techniques and modes of animal husbandry in the Neolithic of south Turkmenistan
Mr Dr Alexei Kasparov (Institute for the History of Material Culture, St Petersburg)
Djeitun is the most well known site of late Neolithic occupations of the northern Kopet-Dagh foothill zone. The settlement is located 20 km to the north-northwest of Ashghabad. Three building horizons have been identified on the site. In total 2130 bone fragments have been identified from settlement dated to the beginning of the VIth millennium BC. Domestic animals were goat, sheep and dog. Not only meat, but also milk were obtained from herds of small hollow-horned ruminants at Djeitun as the domestic cow had not yet appeared during this period southern Central Asia. The basic cereals were wheat and barley. It is possible to assume, that agrotechnical season at Djeitun was short, from March up to the beginning of July. The age and approximate season of the slaughtering of adult animals was determined by the layers of dentin on roots of first permanent lower molar. The season of slaughtering of young and subadult individuals was determined by height of crown of the third lower milk molar. Two principal peaks of death of young goats at Djeitun are March and the end of May-June i.e. in the beginning and in the end of a spring agrotechnical season, while the season of shearing the sheep lasts during the whole season of autumn and winter, approximately from August til November. It is impossible to ascertain a season of slaughtering of adult animals with such accuracy. However it can be seen that adult goats were eliminated during springtime, and adult sheep were killed in autumn and winter. Thus, the periods of slaughtering of adult and young animals coincide on the whole. It is possible that goat was used not only as a source of meat, but also as a source of milk. It could create some additional terms which determined other strategy of killing of goats. For example, it can be connected to that, the part of newborn kids has slaughtered in order to exempt a milk. At the same time, it was ascertained, that in general the main part of goats and sheep perished, not achieved the one year age at Djeitun. In conclusion, it is possible to assume that the use of domestic caprines was related to seasonal cycles of crop use.
Subsistence economies in the Halil Rud Basin: bio-archaeological studies at Konar Sandal south and north
Mrs Dr Marjan Mashkour (CNRS, Natural History Museum, Paris)
The Iranian Plateau, southern Central Asia, and the Greater Indus Valley are not considered to be among the primary centers of plant or animal domestication. Yet the spread of plant and animal husbandry into those regions required adaptations to new habitats, involved the incorporation of local wild relatives into the domestic populations concerned, and included the domestication of local species. All of these processes combined to produce agricultural and pastoral foundations with special characteristics. This paper evaluates the current state of knowledge about agro-pastoralism for the eastern end of the Iranian plateau and for the Indus Valley, an area that archaeology demonstrates was part of an interaction sphere of varying configuration from ca. 7000 to at least 1800 calBC. The amount and quality of the existing archaeobotanical and archaeozoological data for this region are highly variable as are our understandings of the ways that plant and animal products were employed. Particular focus is place on indigenous forms, including various millets, zebu cattle, the camel, and the horse, and on the evidence for local agricultural and pastoral practices.
The development and elaboration of agro-pastoralism in the Indo-Iranian borderlands and adjoining areas
Mr Pr Richard Meadow (Peabody Museum, Harvard University)
The Iranian Plateau, southern Central Asia, and the Greater Indus Valley are not considered to be among the primary centers of plant or animal domestication. Yet the spread of plant and animal husbandry into those regions required adaptations to new habitats, involved the incorporation of local wild relatives into the domestic populations concerned, and included the domestication of local species. All of these processes combined to produce agricultural and pastoral foundations with special characteristics. This paper evaluates the current state of knowledge about agro-pastoralism for the eastern end of the Iranian plateau and for the Indus Valley, an area that archaeology demonstrates was part of an interaction sphere of varying configuration from ca. 7000 to at least 1800 calBC. The amount and quality of the existing archaeobotanical and archaeozoological data for this region are highly variable as are our understandings of the ways that plant and animal products were employed. Particular focus is place on indigenous forms, including various millets, zebu cattle, the camel, and the horse, and on the evidence for local agricultural and pastoral practices.
Plants, Animals, and People: the Eternal Triangle
Mrs Dr Naomi Miller (University of Pennsylvania)
As archaeologists, we have to separate the study of plant and animal remains for some obvious reasons: taphonomy, recovery methods, laboratory analysis methods (quantification), the nature of the organisms themselves (i.e., more plant types than animal types, but more identifiable animal parts than plant parts. Yet the ancient people we study lived in an environment shared with all kinds of plants and animals. Understanding how plants, animals and people coexisted on the landscape is not straightforward, but there are a variety of ways we can look at our data to come up with a unified picture. Dryfarming agropastoral systems, irrigated agropastoral systems, and specialized pastoralism are all amenable to investigation by archaeologists. For example, even in the absence of settlement, nomadic pastoral peoples move through a territory harvesting fruits, nuts and firewood, while their flocks graze; archaeobotanical analysis at Malyan, Iran, for example, showed that such people left a legacy of vegetation change during what appeared to be a 400-year gap in regional settlement. In dryfarming regions in Anatolia, the character of charred seeds assemblages that plausibly originated in dung fuel reflect foddering practices that can be associated with the use of land for grazing. Central Asian sites are much less well-studied, yet a few preliminary studies give tantalizing hints suggest an archaeobiological approach that considers environmental conditions can give insights about herding practices, the use of forest and desert resources, the presence or absence of economically distinct cultural groups (i.e., nomad, settled).
First palaeo-entomological investigations in Iran (NW highlands): implications for natural environmental changes and human activities during the middle and late Holocene
Dr Philippe Ponel (Institut Méditerranéen d'Ecologie et de Paléoécologie, Marseille)
This study presents a preliminary report on the first palaeoentomological investigation in Iran. The study was carried out on a ~ 6200-year sediment core from Lake Neor located in the highlands of NW Iran (E Ardebil) at 2400 m altitude. The most remarkable feature of this fossil insect record is the near continuous presence of coprophageous and coprophilous coleoptera (Asphodius spp., Onthophagus cf. gibbosus, O. sp., and Oxytelus spp.) from the base of the core onwards. This discovery can be interpreted either as the presence of a very long history of pastoral activities and/or the presence of important wildlife since the mid-Holocene (> 6200 cal yr BP). Absence of coleopteran fauna associated with forest trees and regular occurrences of beetles associated with grasslands indicate that the landscape in Lake Neor region has been composed of open steppic vegetation at least since the mid-Holocene. Palynological examination of the core (under study) will complete this preliminary picture on the palaeoenvironment of the study area in the near future.
philippe.ponel@univ-cezanne.fr
Collecting, hunting, cultivating and herding in northeastern Iran and southern Turkmenistan from the Chalcolithic to the Iron Age
Dr Margareta Tengberg (Natural History Museum, France)
The recent excavations at the sites of Ulug Depe in the Kopet Dagh foothill zone of southern Turkmenistan and Tepe Damghani in the Khorassan province of northeastern Iran have included systematic sampling of floral and faunal remains. Due to excellent preservation conditions and a continuous occupational sequence from the late Chalcolithic (end 5th millennium BC) until the end of the Iron Age (late 1st millennium BC), Ulug Depe constitutes a unique opportunity for understanding the evolution of subsistence economies in this part of Central Asia. Tepe Damghani is one of few Bronze Age sites excavated in northeastern Iran and it presents interesting parallels to southern Central Asia. The present paper summarizes the main results of the bioarchaeological studies carried out at these two sites. Changing patterns in the subsistence economies through time, evidenced by both the archaeobotanical and archaeozoological assemblages, are exposed and the possible reasons for these changes are discussed. Even though the paper focuses on agro-pastoral activities, involving domesticated plants and animals, practices of hunting and collecting wild species in a more extended territory will also be considered.