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Agriculturalists and pastoralists: Bronze Age economy of the Murghab alluvial fan, southern Central Asia

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Abstract

Archaeological investigations of pastoral economies often emphasize exchange relations with agricultural populations, though for Bronze Age Eurasia the notion of a ubiquitous ‘pastoral realm’ has masked various forms of mixed subsistence economies. In Central Asia, there are few attempts to specifically identify the domestic crops utilized by mobile pastoralists or what they may suggest about the role of agriculture in mobile pastoral production or subsistence strategies. This study reports the macrobotanical remains from two Late/Final Bronze Age (ca. 1950–1300 bc) mobile pastoralist habitation sites in the Murghab alluvial fan region of southern Turkmenistan. We compare our results with published macrobotanical data from contemporary agricultural settlements in the Murghab region, as well as with other sites in broader prehistoric Eurasia. We find that mobile pastoralists in the Murghab utilized some of the same domestic crops as their sedentary neighbors. While the data presented here do not preclude the possibility that mobile pastoralists may have practiced some low-investment cultivation (particularly of millet), we hypothesize an economic model that places mobile pastoralists in direct contact with nearby sedentary farming communities through exchange for pre-processed grains. These results highlight one of the possible strategies of mobile pastoral subsistence in Central Asia, and are a further step toward identifying the various degrees of agricultural involvement in the conceptually outdated pastoral realm of Eurasia.

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Acknowledgments

Excavations at Ojakly and subsequent analyses were funded by NSF Grant No. 1036942, Wenner-Gren Grant No. 8157, the George F. Dales Foundation, and the International Research & Exchanges Board IARO Grant program, as well as the Italian Ministry for Foreign Affairs. Excavations at Site 1211/1219 were conducted by the Joint Italian-Turkmen Mission to the Murghab Alluvial Fan, with funds provided by the Italian Ministry for Foreign Affairs, the University of Bologna Dipartimento di Storia Culture Civiltà, and the Italian Institute for Africa and the Orient (IsIAO). Archaeobotanical research was funded by NSF Grant No. 1010678. These excavations and subsequent work could not have taken place without the generous and kind support of our colleagues from the Ministry of Culture of Turkmenistan, namely Mukhammed A. Mamedov, Chief of Memorials Protection and Restoration Department, and Rejepmyrat Jepbarov, Director of the Ancient Merv National Historical Park. We would also like to thank two anonymous reviewers for their detailed reading and helpful comments.

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  1. Anthropology Department, Washington University in St. Louis, CB# 1114, One Brookings Dr., St. Louis, MO, 63130, USA

    Robert N. Spengler III & Lynne M. Rouse

  2. Dipartimento di Storia Culture Civiltà, Università degli Studi di Bologna, Piazza S. Giovanni in Monte, 2, 40124, Bologna, Italy

    Barbara Cerasetti & Maurizio Cattani

  3. UMR 7209 – Archéozoologie, Archéobotanique: Sociétés, Pratiques et Environnements, 55 Rue Buffon, 75005, Paris, France

    Margareta Tengberg

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  1. Robert N. Spengler III
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Spengler, R.N., Cerasetti, B., Tengberg, M. et al. Agriculturalists and pastoralists: Bronze Age economy of the Murghab alluvial fan, southern Central Asia. Veget Hist Archaeobot 23, 805–820 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00334-014-0448-0

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