Sowing the Seeds of Empire : Archaeobotanical and Biomolecular Perspectives on Subsistence Transformation and the Emergence of Early Political Complexity on the Mongolian Steppe

Date of Award

Spring 1-1-2025

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Anthropology

First Advisor

Honeychurch, William

Abstract

This dissertation investigates the longue durée of economic crop introductions and the emergence of indigenous agricultural practice on the Mongolian steppe, a dynamic social and biogeographic crossroads throughout prehistory. The beginnings of intensified human-plant interaction in this region can be inferred by at least the sixth millennium BC through proliferation of plant processing tools often associated with incipient plant food production, but direct evidence for shifts to crop consumption and cultivation has been obscure in the archaeological record until the end of the first millennium BC. Neither the spatiotemporal dynamics of East and West Asian crop taxa introductions nor the social, ecological, economic relationships mediating their processes of integration have previously received dedicated archaeobotanical attention. The research presented in this dissertation begins to clarify early crop histories on the Mongolian steppe through application of multiscalar archaeobotanical and biomolecular methods. Results are presented as a series of multiregional studies. The first and second studies explore the role of a larger agricultural economy in the emergence of eastern Eurasia’s first pastoral nomadic polity, the Xiongnu (c.250 BC-150 AD) through a multi-part case study of economic cereal crop remains from the Egiin Gol Valley, Mongolia’s earliest known site of indigenous agricultural production (c. 300 BCE-150 AD). The first study presents macrobotanical analysis of a diachronic cereal crop assemblage and provides evidence for the existence of a sophisticated multi-cropping agricultural system on the Mongolian steppe. This system included cultivation of multiple wheat varieties (Triticum spp.), multiple barley varieties (Hordeum vulgare), broomcorn millet (Panicum miliaceum) and oat (Avena sp.) by the 3rd century BC, just prior to Xiongnu political genesis. The second study applies stable carbon (δ13C) and nitrogen (δ15N) isotopic analysis to a diachronic sample set of wheat (Triticum spp.) and barley (Hordeum vulgare) grains from Egiin Gol Valley cereal assemblages. δ13C and δ15N values indicate that labor intensive production techniques such as manuring and hydrological management were components of a taxon-specific agricultural strategy by the 3rd century BC and increased over time in concert with regional political centralization. Dietary modeling is also undertaken based on bulk stable isotopic values from local humans and fauna. When considered with other archaeological evidence and historic accounts of the Xiongnu, results suggest that a shift toward higher-yield agricultural production occurred at a community- and likely steppe-wide level as regional political centralization and emerging bureaucratic and military needs of the growing state took shape. These results encourage rethinking of the nature of Xiongnu statecraft, and in turn, the underpinnings of wider societal changes that accompanied the earliest large-scale political centralization on the eastern Eurasian steppe. The third study examines the long term presence of broomcorn millet (Panicum miliaceum) on the Mongolian steppe. This study presents new evidence of broomcorn millet consumption identified through archaeobotanical remains, lipid biomarkers, and compound-specific stable isotopic analysis of cooking vessels from the southeastern Mongolian site of Shiriin Chuluu, beginning in the Middle Bronze Age (c.2200 BC) and continuing through the first millennium AD. A critical review of archaeological millet evidence from the Mongolian steppe and surrounding regions suggests that initial adoption was a stochastic process mediated by distinct sub-regional spheres of interaction. Millet was present on the southeastern Mongolian steppe significantly earlier than in northern regions, likely signaling disparate spatiotemporal dynamics of introduction in different regions of the steppe over millennia. By the end of the first millennium BC, both broomcorn and foxtail millets appear multi-regionally with the emergence of the Xiongnu polity, in association with possible state-mediated agricultural intensification and intra-steppe circulation of crop products. Millets are broadly present in eastern steppe cuisine from this point onward. These findings together suggest that the scale and antiquity of agricultural engagements on the Mongolian steppe are greater than previously recognized. Emerging patterns reveal the contours of variable intra-steppe socioecological trajectories more consistent with those seen in surrounding regions of Inner Asia rather than with conceptually dated narratives of subsistence economic homogeneity, cultural rigidity, and hypermobility as a rule.

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