Environmental context and adaptations of prehistoric and early historical occupation in the Southern Altai (SW Siberia–East Kazakhstan)

Result code in IS VaVaI

<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F70883521%3A28160%2F19%3A63523505" target="_blank" >RIV/70883521:28160/19:63523505 - isvavai.cz</a>

Result on the web

<a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12520-018-0664-0" target="_blank" >https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12520-018-0664-0</a>

DOI - Digital Object Identifier

<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12520-018-0664-0" target="_blank" >10.1007/s12520-018-0664-0</a>

Result language

angličtina

Original language name

Environmental context and adaptations of prehistoric and early historical occupation in the Southern Altai (SW Siberia–East Kazakhstan)

Original language description

The Altai Mountains are well-known for their unique archaeological records, with rich, chronologically sequenced Palaeolithic, Neolithic and the Bronze Age (late fourth–early first millennium BC) sites and, in particular, the Iron Age Scytho-Siberian and early historical monuments represented by burial sites, ritual structures, and rock-art. The Altai prehistoric archaeological localities are distributed across a broad range of topographic and ecological settings, encompassing altitudinal zones from 800 m asl in the lower reaches of glacial river valleys up to 2500/3000 m asl on the high mountain plateaus. The partial spatial overlap of these (often multi-component) geoarchaeological loci over time suggests that similar adaptive strategies were employed by countless generations of hunter and later nomadic communities—their actions constrained by the locally specific forms of (palaeo-)relief and the associated ecosystems. The dynamics of the initial occupation of the boreal and alpine Altai landscapes and subsequent processes of (re-)colonisation during the Final Pleistocene-Holocene transition are directly linked to transformations in the regional hydrological systems after the LGM. The principal settings for early pastoral settlements were the xerothermic grasslands that formed on the flat glacio-lacustrine terraces which rise above the modern fluvial floodplains—the remains of ice-dammed wastage lake basins drained at the end of the Pleistocene (15,000–13,000 year BP). Marked climatic changes, evidenced by regional variations in temperature and humidity across the territory, are well attested in the geological, biotic and archaeological records. The initial Sub-Boreal aridification correlated with the beginnings of the Altai Bronze Age traditions continued until the early Iron Age—causing an expansion of parkland-steppe in the main valleys and a forest retreat in the foothills. Mountain steppes constituted the most essential food-procurement habitat for the Holocene prehistoric and historical settlements of Southern Altai. The current degradation of insular alpine permafrost poses an imminent threat to preservation of the region’s most precious archaeological monuments—the frozen burial mounds of the Pazyryk culture (sixth–third century BC) belonging to the UNESCO World cultural heritage.

Czech name

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Czech description

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Type

J_imp - Article in a specialist periodical, which is included in the Web of Science database

CEP classification

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OECD FORD branch

10506 - Paleontology

Project

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Continuities

V - Vyzkumna aktivita podporovana z jinych verejnych zdroju

Publication year

2019

Confidentiality

S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů

Name of the periodical

Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences

ISSN

1866-9557

e-ISSN

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Volume of the periodical

11

Issue of the periodical within the volume

5

Country of publishing house

DE - GERMANY

Number of pages

22

Pages from-to

2215-2236

UT code for WoS article

000466856100037

EID of the result in the Scopus database

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