Journal
ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESEARCH IN ASIA
Volume 31, Issue -, Pages -Publisher
ELSEVIER SCI LTD
DOI: 10.1016/j.ara.2022.100391
Keywords
Early middle ages; Archaeobotany; Pollen; Broomcorn millet; Turkic peoples; Altai Mountains
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Funding
- Russian Ministry of Science and Education [121041600045-8, 33.1971.2017/4.6]
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This article presents archaeological evidence that some early Turkic populations in northern Central Asia were engaged in farming, particularly millet cultivation. The findings challenge the assumption that people in this region primarily relied on meat and dairy for their diet. The evidence, recovered from a burial in the Altai Mountains in Russia, suggests that millet was present among the ancestors of later Turkic speakers in this region.
While early Turkic populations of northern Central Asia are traditionally thought to have been specialized nomads, over the past few years archaeological studies have shown that at least some of these peoples were engaged in farming, especially low-investment millet cultivation. The Turkic populations that spread across West Asia are thought to have originated in northern Central Asia. Despite the importance of these regions for understanding cultural developments, we have a dearth of data relating to the role of cultivated plants in their life, and scholars generally assume that people in this region lived on a diet of meat and dairy. In this article, we present micro and macrobotanical evidence of millet from a ceramic vessel recovered in a burial in the Kurai Valley of the Altai Mountains in Russia. Ceramic seriation and AMS dating, place the burial in the early Turkic period of the seventh century A.D., providing unique evidence for agricultural goods in medieval northwest Asia. Given the ritual context of the vessel, these data do not elucidate the role of millet in the economy, but we can convincingly demonstrate its presence among people thought to be the ancestors of later Turkic speakers in the Altai mountains. We note that millet cultivation could have been integrated into the economy as part of the seasonal migration cycle of the early Turkic semi-nomads, or they might have acquired the grains from farming communities in the adjacent Altai foothills.
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