Many of my publications are available for download on Academia.edu; if you cannot find an article of interest, please contact me for a copy.
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Claudia Chang. Rethinking prehistoric Central Asia: shepherds, farmers, and nomads
Spengler III, Robert N. (2018). Antiquity.
This book summarises Chang’s attempts to wade through an immense body of Russian literature, and to introduce modern methodological approaches, a novel repertoire of questions and an American scholarly tradition. To this end, she not only pioneered a new frontier, she opened the iron curtains for the scholars who would follow her path.
Review available here.
Arboreal crops on the medieval Silk Road: Archaeobotanical studies at Tashbulak
During the first millennium A.D., Central Asia was marked by broad networks of exchange and interaction, what many historians collectively refer to as the “Silk Road”. Much of this contact relied on high-elevation mountain valleys, often linking towns and caravanserais through alpine territories. This cultural exchange is thought to have reached a peak in the late first millennium A.D., Continue reading
Dung burning in the archaeobotanical record of West Asia: Where are we now?
Spengler, Robert N., III (2018) Vegetation History and Archaeobotany.
In the early 1980s Naomi Miller changed the field of palaeoethnobotany; her research into whether the ancient seed eaters of southwest Asia were human or herbivore opened an ongoing debate over the impact that burning of animal dung had on the formation of archaeobotanical assemblages, and how researchers can differentiate between human and animal food remains. Continue reading
Vegetation change and human impacts on Rebun Island (Northwest Pacific) over the last 6000 years
This study presents a high-resolution, chronologically well-constrained pollen record from Lake Kushu (45֯25’ 58”N, 141֯ 02’05”E) and a record of archaeobotanical remains from the nearby Hamanaka 2 archaeological site. The pollen record suggests continuous long-term cooling, which parallels the decline in Northern Hemisphere summer insolation. This cooling trend is overlaid by several rather quick transitions towards cooler conditions (ca. 5540/5350, 1550, and 390 cal BP) and one distinct decadal-scale cold event around 4130 cal BP. Continue reading
Linking agriculture and exchange to social developments of the Central Asian Iron Age
Robert N. Spengler III, Naomi F. Miller, Reinder Neef, Perry A. Tourtellotte, Claudia Chang
Abstract
Central Asia is commonly referred to as a pastoral realm, and the first millennium B.C. is often thought to mark a period of increased mobility and reliance on animal husbandry. The economic shift of the first millennium B.C. is usually interpreted as a transition toward specialized pastoralism in Central Asia, and the point in time when the Central Asian ‘nomads’ or Scythians appear. Continue reading
Barley (Hordeum vulgare) in the Okhotsk culture (5th–10th century AD) of northern Japan and the role of cultivated plants in hunter-gatherer economies
Abstract
This paper presents a new record of naked barley from the Okhotsk cultural layers of the Hamanaka 2 archaeological site on Rebun Island, northern Japan. Calibrated ages (68% confidence interval) of directly dated barley remains suggest that the crop was used at the site ca. 440-890 cal yr AD. Together with the finds from the Oumu site (north-eastern Hokkaido Island), Continue reading
Eurasian textiles: Case studies in exchange during the incipient and later Silk Road periods
Abstract
In thi
s article, we introduce a new line of evidence for the passage and consumption of one commodity – textiles – into the Dzhungar Mountains of southeastern Kazakhstan during the incipient (i.e., Bronze Age), and later (i.e., Iron Age and Medieval Period) Silk Road periods. Although woolen textiles are known for neighboring western China from several discoveries of clothing in its prehistoric cemeteries, Continue reading
