Introduction

Figure 1.

Location of Baga Gazaryn Chuluu.

Baga Gazaryn Chuluu (BGC) is a range of granite hills surrounded by the desert steppe of Dundgovi Aimag, Mongolia (46.20°N 106.02°E) (Figure 1). In total there are 85km² of rocky range, with an elevation between 1450 and 1750m a.s.l. (Figure 2) This is an exceptional area in terms of, hydrology, ecology and also past human activity. The summer of 2006 saw the completion of four seasons of intensive survey and complementary excavation at BGC. In total 140km² were surveyed within an area of 1200km². Primarily, we recovered the details of the archaeology in the bounded and continuous area of BGC, in total 1659 sites dating from throughout the Holocene were recorded. Most sites are either scattered palimpsest areas of activity rather than structures and village sites; or stone monuments of many different varieties. This brief preliminary report will describe the cultural landscapes of different chronological periods at BGC (Table 1).

Pre-pastoralism and monumental hierarchy

Epi-Paleolithic sites are the most widespread across the landscape of all the periods collected (Figure 3a). Most of these are scatters of microlithic debitage that have some internal integrity in their assemblages (including refits) this suggest that these are not intensively revisited sites. Raw materials are primarily cypto-crystalline stone available in the regional geology of the middle Gobi. These scatters also include other objects; fire cracked rock, stone pounders, ceramics and grinding slabs. None of these are unexpected within the milieu of North-east Asian Epi-Paleolithic hunter-gatherers. These sites show an activity pattern that could be highly oriented toward localised subsistence: intensively using the resources within BGC, perhaps moving only short distances around the rocks and out into the steppe and living close to what could have been marsh and water resources in the drainages of BGC. The close association of some microlithic sites with stone monuments and Bronze Age remains suggests that these Holocene hunter-gatherers were invested in both the new technology and the new individualising burial and monumental regime of Bronze Age nomadic pastoralism. This regime reaches its maturity in the dense landscape of burials and khirigsuur monuments of the Bronze and Early Iron Age (Figure 4).

A mortuary landscape

Table 1.Chronological periods and numbers of types of sites identified in each period.

Settlement density throughout the Bronze and Early Iron Age and the Xionngu period remains relatively constant, however in the Xiongnu period settlement location shifts out of the central valleys to the edges of the rocks (Figure 3b). What is most interesting in this time is the creation of a mortuary landscape at BGC beginning in the Bronze Age. The forms and arrangement of burials differ from one period to the next, but overall pattern of land use is similar throughout. This is the first major manifestation of BGC as a part of a larger - regional - network of land-use, the rocks of BGC have become a special locale for burying within and around.

Figure 2.

View over the landscape of the north-eastern area of BGC.

Political landscapes

During the first millennium AD there is an explosion in settlement activity at BGC and a move away from the mortuary landscape of the preceding 1500 years (Figure 3c). The number of sites and the population using the rocks increase markedly during this time. The first millennium AD was a time of intense political activity and rapidly rising and dissipating polities throughout Inner Asia. In this time settlement has returned to the rocks and spread into new areas. There are burials and monumental sites alongside the settlements and large numbers of rock pecked badges indicative of a complex socio-political landscape within BGC. There is also another political landscape in which the local assertions of power and presence are overlain by regional and macro-regional ones. Examples of this include a large uniquely inscribed and located stele and isolated large standing stone lines.

The settlement pattern at BGC begins to reach the distribution seen in the ethnographic present only as the region is incorporated and integrated into the core of a series of relatively stable larger polities - the Khitan/Liao Empire and Mongol Empire (Figure 3d). In general, the Gobi region was a focus of military activity and industrial and pastoralist intensification. At BGC there is continued growth in the number and locations of sites and they expand into the rocky highlands. People invest in infrastructure; corrals, catch dams, and small terraces possibly to grow animal fodder for increased herds, as a hedge against decreased local mobility, or to meet the demands of the state. The large sites and display of the Türk period disappear as the political economy of the northern Gobi shifts away from the focus on individual local leaders to the imperial and ethnic identities seen in historical accounts of the region.

Figure 3.

Site distribution in four of the major periods recorded at BGC.

Figure 4.

The distribution of Bronze and Early Iron Age stone monument sites.

Discussion

Our work at BGC demonstrates great transformations, local continuity, complexity and context in the prehistory and early history of Inner Asia. Bronze Age nomadic pastoralism in the North Gobi was adopted into the landscape of mobile hunter-gatherers with an already robust monumental system and provided a springboard for the emergence of new social hierarchies. The cultural landscape after the adoption of nomadic pastoralism was not a static and unchanging idyll, in all periods there are responses to and reflections of larger political, ideological and economic contexts. The local view that we have gained at BGC is that of a central place in network of nodes, an island in the steppe. As a single activity area the rocks can be viewed as a part of much larger patterns, but within BGC we have a view of the dynamics of districts, neighborhoods and places.