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Bronze Age agro-pastoralist populations with economies and materials that are generally consistent with the Andronovo Culture--but with localised variations--are known throughout the mountains bordering the Eastern Eurasian Steppe. Recently, evidence for this tradition has also been found in north-west Xinjiang, China, although many questions remain about the production, use and significance of ceramics here. The authors' analyses of a sample of pottery from sites across the Bortala Valley permit the reconstruction of the ceramic chaine operatoire and offer two distinct stories: one of cultural connectivity with regional networks of Eurasian pastoralists, and another about self-expression through small-scale local ceramic production. Keywords: China, Xinjiang, Bronze Age, Andronovo, ceramics, chaine operatoire, Introduction Situated between the vast Eurasian Steppe, the Inner Asian Mountain Corridor and central China, Xinjiang was a central node in ancient trans-Eurasian exchanges. While best known for the historic-period [...]

The relationships between societal and environmental changes have long attracted strong interest amongst scientists. Each of these systems has their own internal dynamics such as the adaptability and social systems built by people; and the feedbacks and controls on environmental systems. North west Xinjiang presents a challenging topographic and climate setting for people. Yet existing evidence shows Bronze Age populations settled into the Bortala Valley as early as the third millennium BCE. The harshness of the region provides a test case for exploring how environmental changes and societal changes may have intertwined. Near the town of Wenquan there is an extensive wetland which contains a sedimentary record covering the last 10,400 years. The early to mid-Holocene is marked by desert and a lake at Wenquan, but there is little evidence for human activity. By 4500 cal year BP the climate became more humid and soon peak humidity occurred when a regional steppe was developed and small numbers of trees were present on the mountains, also the lake shallowed to become a marsh and peatland. The uplands saw a slight increase in tree cover after this, probably as a result of moisture increase due to some cooling. Later changes in the archaeological record seem to be independent of the timing of any environmental changes, and human impacts on the wetland were small until historical times. In short, the major change from desert to steppe may have enabled people to settle the region, but later changes in the environment were too small to be revealed in the Wenquan sediment data, with the adaptability of societies overcoming any environmental challenges and with land-use practices being too small or localized to impact the palaeoenvironmental record. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Excavations at a rock shelter in eastern Jordan have provided new evidence for exploitation of the dry. steppe about the middle of the fourth millennium B.C.E. The findings of the el-Ḥibr excavations, together with a growing corpus of evidence from elsewhere regarding the presence of human populations in the semiarid zones of the Near and Middle East, provide material for a discussion of the nature of relations between "desert and sown" in that period. Analyses of the excavated material and data from a major survey program in the region (The Burquϲ/Ruweishid Project) suggest that groups using the deep steppe in the fourth millennium B.C.E. were nomadic, with a mixed, multiresource economy, in contact with discrete areas within the verdant zones. It is cautiously suggested that such evidence can be used to explore the origins of state-tribe relations that characterize the history of the Near and Middle East in later periods, up to the present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]