Models for iron age agriculture and pastoralism in Kazakhstan

Abstract

During the first millennium BCE the Saka (eastern variants of the Scythians) have been characterized as early nomadic confederacies or states. Recently there has been considerable discussion about the role of agro pastoralism in Eurasian prehistory, especially during the Bronze and Iron Ages (ca. 2500 BCE to 400/500 CE).1-4 The term of agro pastoralism has become so widespread in archaeological literature as a catch-all term that the variations within and between dual economic systems of agriculture and mobile pastoralism have become obscured. In this brief essay I wish to discuss the ways in which agriculture articulated with pastoralism in ancient Iron Age cultures of Eurasia. While the assumption is that agro pastoralism represents a mutually symbiotic relationship between crop cultivation and grazing of herd animals, this may not always be the case. Furthermore, herders may belong not only to different occupational classes than farmers, but they often may represent different ethnic groups separate from farmers.5 An example of this, might be the Andronovo herdsmen of Ojakly, who lived apart from the Bactrian-Margiana Archaeological Complex (BMAC) urban dwellers of Gonur Depe during the Bronze Age in the second millennium BCE.6,7