R27 - The Emergence of Food-Producing Economies in Central Asia: The Intersection of Cultural and Biological Data

Session Organisers: Svetlana Shnaider, Robert Spengler

Category: Domestication / Subsistence Economy

Session Abstract: Central Asia has been, throughout a large part of human history, a primary conduit for the diffusion for cultural elements, technological innovations, and genes. Over the past few years, human ancient genomics projects, combined with growing data from archaeobotany, zooarchaeology, and isotopic analysis are allowing archaeologists to better contextualize their archaeological sites and associated artifacts. Despite major advances in scholarship, little remains known about the Neolitization processes of the Early and Mid-Holocene and the ways they underscored or reshaped population structures and cultural repertoires across Central Asia. This session seeks to bring together new insights into the transition to the food producing economies, and mobility dynamics of Neolithic populations that inhabited diverse environmental and cultural contexts across Central Asia. This session welcomes new perspectives derived from excavations, faunal and botanical analyses, and biomolecular and genomic records, with the overall aim of building holistic explanatory frameworks that better resolve the temporality and the cultural mechanisms associated with the origin and spread of farming and herding across the core of the ancient world. Among the question that we hope to grapple with in this session are: 1) what role did wild plants and animals play in the diet prior to the advent of cultivation behaviors. 2) Can we still discuss local innovations in economy or was the Neolithization of Inner Asia part of a demic wave spreading from southwest Asia. And, 3) what are the timing and routes of dispersal for the earliest crops and cultivation practices within this vast geographic region.

Room: B

08/11/2024

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
10:00 - 10:20	Svetlana Shnaider, Anna Molodtseva, Artem Yakovlev, Snezhana Zhilich, Greta Brancaleoni, Temirlan Chargynov, Saltanat Alisher Kyzy, William Rendu	Unearthing The Heart of Eurasia: New Insights Into Neolithic Central Asia
10:20 - 10:40	Robert Spengler	The Origins of Agriculture in Central Asia
10:40 - 11:00	Snezhana Zhilich, Valentina Alekseitseva, Temirlan Chargynov, Nuritdin Sayfullaev, Svetlana Shnaider	Advance in microarchaeological studies of Neolithic sites in Central Asia
11:00 - 11:20	Giedre Motuzaite Matuzeviciute, Kubatbek Tabaldiev, Aida Abdykanova	Beyond the daily subsistence: rituals among the prehistoric farmers of the Inner Asian Mountains

Lunch Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
13:00 - 13:20	Shogo Kume, Ayako Shibutani, Hikmatulla Hoshimov, Bokijon Matbabaev	Cereal storage or cereal processing or both? Some thoughts on post-harvesting activities in the Late Bronze Age Fergana Valley
13:20 - 13:40	Barbara Zach, Robert Spengler, Ricardo Fernandes	Earliest pathways of broomcorn millet to the west
13:40 - 14:00	Saltanat Alisher Kyzy, Svetlana Shnaider	Eastern Caspian culture in the late Stone Age
14:00 - 14:20	Kseniia Boxleitner, Robert Spengler, Temirlan Chargynov, Snezhana Zhilich, Aida Abdykanova, Nuritdin Sayfullaev, Valentina Alekseitseva, Svetlana Shnaider	Letting The Grass Grow Under Our Feet: Weedy Remains Of The Early And Mid-Holocene Neolithization In Central Asia.

Coffee Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
14:45 - 15:05	Kirill Kiryushin, Yaroslav Frolov, Alexander Schmidt	Neolithic-Chalcolithic burial complexes of the Barnaul Ob region: problems of chronology and cultural affiliation
15:05 - 15:25	Victor Merz	Origins of Production Economies in the Steppe Zone of Eurasia
15:25 - 15:45	Dragana Filipovic	Push and pull factors in the adoption of innovations in plant economy: learning from the Neolithic