Ancient Agricultural and Pastoral Landscapes on the South Side of Lake Issyk-Kul: Long-Term Diachronic Analysis of Changing Patterns of Land Use, Climate Change, and Ritual Use in the Juuku and Kizil Suu Valleys

Abstract

The main goal of this paper is to present results of preliminary archaeological research on the south side of Lake Issyk-Kul in Kyrgyzstan. We test the hypothesis that agropastoral land use changed over four millennia from the Bronze Age through the Kirghiz period due to economic, socio-political, and religious shifts in the prehistoric and historic societies of this region. Our research objectives are to: (1) describe and analyze survey results from the Lower Kizil Suu Valley; (2) discuss the results of radiometric and archaeobotanical samples taken from three stratigraphic profiles at three settlements from the Juuku Valley, including the chronological periods of the Wusun (140 to 437 CE), the Qarakhanid (942 to 1228 CE), and the historic Kirghiz (1700 to present CE); and (3) conduct preliminary GIS spatial analyses on the Iron Age mortuary remains (Saka and Wusun periods). This research emerges out of the first archaeological surveys conducted in 2019–2021 and includes the Lower Kizil Suu alluvial fan; it is an initial step toward developing a model for agropastoral land use for upland valleys of the Inner Tian Shan Mountains.

Keywords

• archaeological landscapes
• Iron Age
• Medieval Period
• agriculture
• pastoralism
• vertical zonation