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Animal exploitation in the oases: an archaeozoological review of Iron Age sites in southern Central Asia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2017

Johanna Lhuillier  and
Marjan Mashkour
Johanna Lhuillier*
Affiliation:
Université Lyon, CNRS UMR 5133, Archéorient, Maison de l'Orient et de la Méditerranée, 7 rue Raulin, 69365 Lyon cedex 07, France (Email: johanna.lhuillier@mom.fr)
Marjan Mashkour
Affiliation:
CNRS UMR 7209, Archéozoologie, Archéobotanique, CP55, 55 rue Buffon, 75005 Paris, France (Email: mashkour@mnhn.fr)
*
*Author for correspondence (Email: johanna.lhuillier@mom.fr)
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Abstract

Protohistoric populations of the southern steppes experienced a series of significant changes in settlement and material culture between the Late Bronze Age (c. 1500 BC) and the end of the Iron Age. Analysis of new archaeozoological data from Turkmen sites and re-examination of published data from Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan reveal considerable economic flexibility and adaptive responses to the variety of ecosystems. They indicate that localised cultural choices, perhaps responding to local environmental constraints, persisted throughout this period, despite successive cultural or political shifts, including the Achaemenid conquest of the region in the sixth century BC.

Keywords

EurasiaCentral AsiaIron Agearchaeozoologysubsistence
Type
Research
Information
Antiquity , Volume 91 , Issue 357 , June 2017 , pp. 655 - 673
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd, 2017 

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