Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-p9bg8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-24T00:08:27.240Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

From sheep to (some) horses: 4500 years of herd structure at the pastoralist settlement of Begash (south-eastern Kazakhstan)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Michael Frachetti  and
Norbert Benecke
Michael Frachetti
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, Washington University in St Louis, 1 Brookings Drive, CB 1114, St Louis, MO 63130, USA (Email: [email protected])
Norbert Benecke
Affiliation:
Leiter des Referats Naturwissenschaften Archäozoologie, German Archaeological Institute, Scientific Department of the Head Office, Im Dol 2-6, Haus II, 14195 Berlin, Germany (Email: [email protected])
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Does the riding of horses necessarily go with the emergence of Eurasian pastoralism? Drawing on their fine sequence of animal bones from Begash, the authors think not. While pastoral herding of sheep and goats is evident from the Early Bronze Age, the horse appears only in small numbers before the end of the first millennium BC. Its adoption coincides with an increase in hunting and the advent of larger politically organised groups.

Keywords

KazakhstanEurasian steppeBronze Ageprehistoric periodhistoric periodpastoralismhorsesherd structure
Type
Research
Information
Antiquity , Volume 83 , Issue 322 , December 2009 , pp. 1023 - 1037
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Anthony, D. W. 2007. The horse, the wheel, and language: how Bronze-Age riders from the Eurasian steppes shaped the modern world. Princeton (NJ): Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Antipina, E. E. 1997. Metody rekonstruktsii osobennostei skotovodstva na yuge vostochnoi Evropy v epokhy bronzy. Rossiskaya Arkheologiya 3: 20–32.Google Scholar
Barfield, T. J. 1993. The nomadic alternative. Englewood Cliffs (NJ): Prentice Hall.Google Scholar
Benecke, N. 2003. Iron Age economy of the Inner Asian steppe. A bioarchaeological perspective from the Talgar region in the Ily River Valley (southeastern Kazakhstan). Eurasia Antiqua 9: 63–84.Google Scholar
Benecke, N. & Von Een Driesch, A.. 2003. Horse exploitation in the Kazakh Steppes during the Eneolithic and Bronze Age, in Levine, M. A., Renfrew, A. C. & Boyle, K. (ed.) Prehistoric steppe adaptation and the horse (McDonald Institute Monographs): 69–82. Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research.Google Scholar
Chang, C. 2002. The evolution of steppe communities from the Bronze Age through medieval periods in southeastern Kazakhstan (Zhetysu): the Kazakh-American Talgar Project 1994-2001. Sweet Briar (VA): Sweet Briar College.Google Scholar
Chang, C., Benecke, N., Grigoriev, F. P., Rosen, A. M. & Tourtellotte, P. A.. 2003. Iron Age society and chronology in South-east Kazakhstan. Antiquity 77: 298–312.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Čugunov, K.V., Parzinger, H., Nagler, A. & Terebenin, V.. 2006. Der Goldschatz von Aržan: ein Fürstengrab der Skythenzeit in der südsibirischen Steppe. München: Schirmer Mosel.Google Scholar
Environmental Systems Research Institute. 1994. Digital chart of the world for use with ESRI desktop software, Arcdata. Redlands (CA), USA.Google Scholar
Frachetti, M. D. 2004. Bronze Age pastoral landscapes of Eurasia and the nature of social interaction in the mountain steppe zone of eastern Kazakhstan. PhD dissertation, University of Pennsylvania. Ann Arbor (MI): University Microfilms.Google Scholar
Frachetti, M. D. 2008a. Pastoralist landscapes and social interaction in Bronze Age Eurasia. Berkeley (CA): University of California Press.Google Scholar
Frachetti, M. D. 2008b. Variability and dynamic landscapes of mobile pastoralism in ethnography and prehistory, in Barnard, H. & Wendrich, W. (ed.) The archaeology of mobility: nomads in the Old and in the New World: 366–96. Los Angeles (CA): Cotsen Institute of Archaeology (UCLA).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frachetti, M. D. & Mar'yashev, A.. 2007. Long-term occupation and seasonal settlement of eastern Eurasian pastoralists at Begash, Kazakhstan. Journal of Field Archaeology 32(3): 221–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gorbunov, A. P., Samashev, Z. S. & Severskii, V.. 2005. The treasures of frozen burial mounds of the Kazakh Altai: materials of the Berel burial site. Almaty: Il′Tekh-Kitap.Google Scholar
Habermehl, K.-H. 1975. Die Altersbestimmung bei Haus- und Labortieren. 2. Auflage. Berlin & Hamburg: Parey.Google Scholar
Herre, W. 1986. Sus scrofa Linnaeus, 1758 - Wildschwein, in Handbuch der Säugetiere Europas 2/II: 36–66. Wiesbaden: Paarhufer - Artiodactyla.Google Scholar
Kalieva, S. S. & Logvin, V. N.. 1997. Skotovody Turgaya v tret'em tysyacheletii do nashei ery. Kystanai: Akademiia Nauk.Google Scholar
Kuz'mina, E. E. 2008. The prehistory of the Silk Road. Philadelphia (PA): University of Pennsylvania Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Khazanov, A. 1994. Nomads and the outside world. Madison (WI): University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Levine, M. A., 2004. Exploring the criteria for early horse domestication, in Jones, M. (ed.) Traces of ancestry: studies in honour of Colin Renfrew (McDonald Institute Monograph): 115–26. Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research.Google Scholar
Levine, M. A., 2005. Domestication and early history of the horse, in Mills, D. M. & McDonnell, S. M. (ed.) The domestic horse: the origins, development and management of its behaviour: 5–22. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Masanov, N. E. 1995. Kochevaia tsivilizatsiia kazakhov osnovy zhiznedeiatel nosti nomadnogo obshchestva. Almaty: Sotsinvest Gorizont.Google Scholar
O'Connell, T. C., Levine, M. A. & Hedges, R.E.M.. 2003. The importance of fish in the diet of Central Eurasian peoples from the Mesolithic to the Early Iron Age, in Levine, M. A., Renfrew, A. C. & Boyle, K. (ed.) Prehistoric steppe adaptation and the horse (McDonald Institute Monographs): 253–68. Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research.Google Scholar
Olsen, S. L. 2003. The exploitation of horses at Botai, Kazakhstan, in Levine, M. A., Renfrew, A. C. & Boyle, K. (ed.) Prehistoric steppe adaptation and the horse (McDonald Institute Monographs): 83–104. Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research.Google Scholar
Olsen, S. L. 2006. Early horse domestication in the Eurasian Steppes, in Zeder, M. A. (ed.) Documenting domestication the intersection of genetics and archaeology: 245–69. Berkeley (CA): University of California Press.Google Scholar
Olsen, S. L., Bradley, B., Maki, D. & Outram, A.. 2006. Copper Age community organization in Northern Kazakhstan, in Peterson, D. L., Popova, L. M. & Smith, A. T. (ed.) Beyond the steppe and the sown: proceedings of the 2002 University of Chicago Conference on Eurasian Archaeology (Colloquia Pontica 13): 89–111. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Outram, A.K., Stear, N. A., Bendrey, R., Olsen, S., Kasparov, A., Zaibert, V., Thorpe, N. & Evershed, R. P.. 2009. The earliest horse harnessing and milking. Science 323(5919): 1332-5.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mar'yashev, A.N. & Frachetti, M. D.. 2007. Issledovanie mogil'nikov i poseleniya u sela Bigash v vostochnom Semirech'ye. Istoria i Arkeologiya Semirech'ya 3: 100–105.Google Scholar
Melkopitayushchie Kazakhstana. 1969-1985. V chetyrekh tomakh. Alma-ata: Nauka.Google Scholar
Rogers, J. D. 2007. The contingencies of state formation in eastern Inner Asia. Asian Perspectives 46(2): 249–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Steiger, C. 1990. Vergleichend morphologische Untersuchungen an Einzelknochen des postkranialen skeletts der altweltkamele. Unpublished xx dissertation, University of Munich.Google Scholar
Vainshtein, S. I. 1991. Mir Kochevnikov Tsentral'nyi Azii. Moscow: Nauka.Google Scholar