Bronze Age pastoral landscapes of Eurasia and the nature of social interaction in the mountain steppe zone of eastern Kazakhstan

This study focuses on the nature of social and economic interaction among Late Bronze Age (c.1800--1500 BC) pastoralists of the mountainous steppes of Semirech'ya (eastern Kazakhstan). This period is typically documented in terms of various regional archaeological culture groups of the Andronovo Cultural Community, whose alleged mobility contributed to the formation of a wide macro phenomenon that spanned the Eurasian steppe zone, reflected in the wide distribution of a common material culture. The genesis of this distribution is typically explained through models of long distance migration or cultural diffusion, which resulted from the demands of an extensive pastoral economy and was facilitated by the ability to ride horses on the part of Bronze Age groups. This study challenges these models using archaeological data recovered from archaeological survey and excavations carried out by the author in the Koksu River Valley in the Dzhungar Mountains (Semirech'ye). The survey documented substantial settlements, burials, and ritual locations, and excavations of a settlement and three burials revealed exotic Bronze Age ceramics, and bronze and gold jewelry, dating to the early 2nd millennium BC using absolute and typological dating methods. The analytical approach brings together detailed environmental analysis, ethno-historical documentation, and archaeological materials of the study zone to illustrate that Late Bronze Age pastoralists of the Koksu Valley were engaged in regionally limited, though geographically variable, pattern of mobility and interaction. Botanical sampling contributed to reconstructions of the region's paleo-environment, and stratigraphic reconstructions contributed to an argument for a limited seasonal migration pattern on the part of Bronze Age pastoralists. This localized mobility helped form a dynamic "landscape," which reflected the "ordered variability" in the practices of Bronze Age populations. This condition of localized variable mobility enabled them to establish diverse social, political, and economic relationships of interaction with regional groups, and generated a context by which exotic materials were introduced as part of social and political interaction within a regional context, and not necessarily due to long distance contacts.