Eurasische Hügelgrabsysteme : landschaftsarchäologische Untersuchungen des prähistorischen Südaltais

Abstract

For thousands of years, Northern Xinjiang and the southern flank of the Altai Mountains have been an important transitional region between major ecological zones of Eurasia. As a result of this specific setting and particular preservation conditions, the region is known as one of Central Asia’s richest and most varied archaeological zones. From the Late Neolithic period onwards, different groups left their permanent marks on the landscape by means of an extraordinary number of monuments. A joint German-Chinese project was set up in 2014 as the basis of this dissertation. After long and careful preparation, establishing of the necessary relationships, and an endless number of administrative hurdles, in July 2015, an intensive survey was conducted in the Hailiutan basin near the Chinese-Russian-Kazakh border. Through the application of a Hough Forest based automatic detection algorithm on high-resolution satellite imagery, an area with a rich and varied archaeological heritage was predefined. More than a year of working with remote sensing data helped immensely with the planning and execution of the field project. The outcome was a detailed database linked with a Geographic Information System. In total, close to 1,000 structures ranging from Early Bronze Age burials to Turkic ritual monuments were mapped. As suggested by the results of the remote sensing survey, this intermontane basin seems to be one of the very few loci in the region, which enable us to understand the diachronic development of the Southern Altai over more than 4,000 years of cultural history. The analysis of the data shows that the occupation of the basin started during the Bronze Age. Funerary construction activity peaked during the Iron Age. The Late Iron Age marks an abrupt change in the cultural development, possibly related to climatic change, whereas with the beginning of the Turkic period, a return of structures onto the alluvial terraces in connection with earlier monuments can be traced. The variety of monuments suggests influences at different times from the Russian and Kazakh Altai, the Mongolian regions of the mountain range, as well as the Semirechye.