Leah Holguin (2016)

Keywords:  hydrosocial landscapes, human-environment interactions, paleo environment, Holocene, Mongolia

Abstract:

Archaeology views social progression as a linear trajectory, where hunting and gathering and nomadic pastoralism are stepping-stones to sedentary lifestyles and agriculture. The Mongolian Neolithic contradicts this dominant narrative, especially in the South Gobi Desert where there is evidence of sedentary communities that utilized pottery, mortars, and pestles. At some point during the Bronze Age, nomadic pastoralism was adopted as the dominant subsistence strategy and these sedentary communities were abandoned. This unexpected shift in subsistence strategy may have been related to profound environmental changes occurring at this time, and further examining this may help us to understand how human societies adapt to changing levels of uncertainty about resource availability. This presentation examines the hydrosocial landscape of the Ulaan Nuur paleo hydrological system in the Mongolian Gobi Desert, and explores how it compares to patterns observed around other hydrosocial landscapes of paleo hydrological systems across Mongolia.