With National Science Foundation support Dr. Claudia Chang and her colleagues will conduct three field seasons of archaeological and ethnographic research in the Chilik region of southeastern Kazakhstan which constitutes the boundary between the Tien Shan Mountains and the broad Eurasian steppe. The team brings together Western, Kazakhstani and Chinese specialists in archaeology, historical linguistics, geoarchaeology ethnography and archaeology to conduct a coordinated investigation into the origins and development of Eurasian nomadic societies. At Chilik, a large alluvial valley, the team will initiate the collection of vegetation, soils and geomorphological data to create a modern-day environmental baseline which will provide a context to interpret prehistoric economies of herding, farming and hunting and gathering. The team will construct a geographic (GIS) database that will allow them to implement a computer-based cartographic system to reconstruct how prehistoric peoples exploited the multiple environmental zones in the region and how patterns of exploitation are related to different site types. Reconnaissance surveys will provide the basis for sub-surface testing for buried archaeological deposits. Six sites representing the entire chronological span of human habitation will be selected for testing. Larger scale block excavations will be conducted at Bronze and Iron Age sites. Complementary ethnographic data will be collected on contemporary Kazakh land use, economy, technology and social organization to provide a template for reconstructing past herding and farming economies. Although archaeologists have long recognized that nomadic pastoral societies played an important role in Eurasian prehistory, this development has always been viewed from the peripheries - the regions where such groups came into contact with more settled agrarian societies. The recent opening of Kazakhstan to foreign researchers will now permit this development to be studied in the heartland. Dr. Chang and her collaborators will focus on four questions: 1. What evidence exists to establish that Eurasian steppe cultures had their own indigenous origins and internal dynamics in the evolution of complex society? 2. How did the multi-resource economic base of this region play in role in what is likely a unique developmental process? 3. How can ethnographic data serve as a baseline for reconstruction the past? 4. How can the models of diffusion and migration that are currently used to explain the spread of Indo-European languages and related cultural traditions be illumined by archaeological data from this region? This research is important for several reasons. It will open a long-closed area to international archaeological investigation. It will provide data of interest to many archaeologists and shed new light on the development of complex societies.
