TY - JOUR
T1 - In search of a Paleolithic Silk Road in Kazakhstan
AU - Iovita, Radu
AU - Varis, Aristeidis
AU - Namen, Abay
AU - Cuthbertson, Patrick
AU - Taimagambetov, Zhaken
AU - Miller, Christopher E.
N1 - Funding Information:
We would like to thank Andrei Krivoshapkin, Arina Khatsenovich, Evgeny Rybin, Nicolas Zwyns, and John Olsen for inviting us to contribute this paper, which is based on a presentation at the UISPP 2018 symposium on the Prehistory of Central Asia. We thank Saman Heydari-Guran and Diego E. Angelucci for their helpful reviews of this paper's first draft. In Kazakhstan, we thank Dean Mendigul Nogaibaeva and Prof. Gani Omarov (Faculty of History, Ethnology, and Archaeology, Kazakh National University) for their unwavering support of our project. We would like to acknowledge Dr. Gani Iskakov (Turkestan Museum), now sadly deceased, who joined us in our South Kazakhstan field season in 2018. We would also like to thank our many student volunteers, without whom this work would have been impossible. Finally, we would like to thank our field support staff and the local people who helped us find so many caves. A. Varis would like to thank G. Lazaridis (School of Geology, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki) for his comments on cave development and faulting. The PALAEOSILKROAD project conducted all field research under license No. 15008746 (12.05.2015) of the National Museum of the Republic of Kazakhstan based on the collaboration protocol between the Eberhard-Karls University of Tübingen and the National Museum. This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement n° 714842 ; PALAEOSILKROAD project).
Funding Information:
We would like to thank Andrei Krivoshapkin, Arina Khatsenovich, Evgeny Rybin, Nicolas Zwyns, and John Olsen for inviting us to contribute this paper, which is based on a presentation at the UISPP 2018 symposium on the Prehistory of Central Asia. We thank Saman Heydari-Guran and Diego E. Angelucci for their helpful reviews of this paper's first draft. In Kazakhstan, we thank Dean Mendigul Nogaibaeva and Prof. Gani Omarov (Faculty of History, Ethnology, and Archaeology, Kazakh National University) for their unwavering support of our project. We would like to acknowledge Dr. Gani Iskakov (Turkestan Museum), now sadly deceased, who joined us in our South Kazakhstan field season in 2018. We would also like to thank our many student volunteers, without whom this work would have been impossible. Finally, we would like to thank our field support staff and the local people who helped us find so many caves. A. Varis would like to thank G. Lazaridis (School of Geology, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki) for his comments on cave development and faulting. The PALAEOSILKROAD project conducted all field research under license No. 15008746 (12.05.2015) of the National Museum of the Republic of Kazakhstan based on the collaboration protocol between the Eberhard-Karls University of T?bingen and the National Museum. This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement n? 714842; PALAEOSILKROAD project).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020
PY - 2020/9/10
Y1 - 2020/9/10
N2 - Paleoanthropological data suggest that the Late Pleistocene was a time of population contact and possibly dispersal in Central Asia. Geographic and paleoclimatic data suggest that a natural corridor through Kazakhstan linked areas to the north and east (Siberia, China) to those further to the west and south (Uzbekistan), much like a Paleolithic Silk Road. We review the known Pleistocene archaeology and paleoclimatic setting of this region and provide a geoarchaeological framework for contextualizing preliminary survey results of the PALAEOSILKROAD project's first three seasons of fieldwork. We discuss some systematic biases in three geomorphic and sedimentary archives: karst, loess, and spring deposits, specifying ways in which these biases might determine the kinds of data that are extractable by systematic survey. In particular, we caution about the possibility of future systematic biases in chronology that could come about as a result of the type of geomorphic context in which the sites are recovered. We conclude with recommendations for future work in the area.
AB - Paleoanthropological data suggest that the Late Pleistocene was a time of population contact and possibly dispersal in Central Asia. Geographic and paleoclimatic data suggest that a natural corridor through Kazakhstan linked areas to the north and east (Siberia, China) to those further to the west and south (Uzbekistan), much like a Paleolithic Silk Road. We review the known Pleistocene archaeology and paleoclimatic setting of this region and provide a geoarchaeological framework for contextualizing preliminary survey results of the PALAEOSILKROAD project's first three seasons of fieldwork. We discuss some systematic biases in three geomorphic and sedimentary archives: karst, loess, and spring deposits, specifying ways in which these biases might determine the kinds of data that are extractable by systematic survey. In particular, we caution about the possibility of future systematic biases in chronology that could come about as a result of the type of geomorphic context in which the sites are recovered. We conclude with recommendations for future work in the area.
KW - Central Asia
KW - Geoarchaeology
KW - Paleolithic
KW - Systematic survey
KW - Taphonomy
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U2 - 10.1016/j.quaint.2020.02.023
DO - 10.1016/j.quaint.2020.02.023
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85080148534
SN - 1040-6182
VL - 559
SP - 119
EP - 132
JO - Quaternary International
JF - Quaternary International
ER -