Abstract
Archaeological evidence emerging over the past decade clearly illustrates that agro-pastoralists living along the foothills of major mountain chains in Central Asia (the so-called “Inner Asian Mountain Corridor” or IAMC) facilitated the spread of domesticated grains through their direct involvement in farming. While the environmental conditions across the northwestern slopes of the IAMC provided adequate resources for incipient farming and herding as early as the mid-3rd mill. BCE, the development of local agricultural strategies on the extremely arid and eroded foothills on the southeastern, leeward side of the mountains remain comparatively less studied. Our study tackles this problem by combining geoarchaeological analysis with conventional macrobotanical identification in the investigation of a 1st-mill. CE agro-pastoralist farming site, Mohuchahangoukou (MGK), located on the arid foothills of the Tianshan range. Our results illustrate how ancient agro-pastoralists at MGK innovated irrigation systems both to combat water shortage and, importantly, to trap sediments carried by flood-water for crop cultivation. By synthesizing currently available data, we estimate that they managed to trap about 40 cm of fine-grained sediment within a span of 200 years or even less. These stone-built field systems helped water a diverse stand of crops and create deeper soils in an otherwise deflated landscape with thin desert soils. Since we detected high levels of salt concentration (>2 dSm-1) in the lower portions of all three test trenches we analyzed, we conclude that soil salinization might have affected the long-term sustainability of this form of irrigated field management. We also infer that, besides engineering efforts, the ancient agro-pastoralists at MGK had to resolve the scheduling conflicts between irrigated farming and animal herding through labor specialization.
Highlights
Recent research in the heartland of Central Asia shows that east-west connectivity was deeply rooted in the interaction networks that formed among mountain agro-pastoralists by the mid3rd mill
Based on the results of these analyses, we argue that irrigation systems were key technologies used by seasonally mobile agro-pastoralists to farm the arid environment of the southern Tianshan foothills
Current research has yet to provide a satisfying explanation of the specific farming strategies adopted by ancient agro-pastoralists to counteract the harsh environment on the leeward side of the IAMC
Summary
Recent research in the heartland of Central Asia shows that east-west connectivity was deeply rooted in the interaction networks that formed among mountain agro-pastoralists by the mid3rd mill. In light of the ecological opportunities of vertical pasture distribution documented across the IAMC, archaeological evidence and ethnographic studies suggest that mobile pastoralists have long used a range of highland pastures in the summer and dispersed to lower-elevation camps in the winter [8,9,10]. This broad trend in pastoralist mobility has subsequently been linked to material and information transfers, eventually leading to the formation of extensive interaction networks along the IAMC and beyond [2]. The flow of materials and information shaped diverse transmissions of pastoralism as well as the spread of domesticated grains and farming practices [11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18] (Fig 1A)
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