Medieval mortuary millet: Micro and macrobotanical evidence from an early Turkic burial in the Altai

Abstract

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.