» Home > In the News

Archaeology newsbites March 2014

5 April 2014
Archaeology

At http://westerndigs.org/hidden-architecture-of-1000-year-old-village-disc… … which concerns an early Pueblo village site – and talking about sites (of the web variety) Western Digs is very good.

At www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-04/wuis-ans033114.php … charred grains of barley, millet and wheat left at a camp site some 5000 years ago have sparked an odd theory. The site is in Kazakhstan (central Asia) on what was the Silk Road into China. However, the campsite belonged to nomads (or pastoralists) so what were they doing with grains. The theory is that grain was used by pastoralists and this opens the possibility that crops could have been spread not just by farmers but other groups of people. In other words, they appear to have practised a dual economy – but were they on the move. Another idea might be that they were not strictly pastoralists but people migrating across central Asia (possibly over a long distance), a migratory movement rather than a strictly pastoral society. The date, around 3000BC, during a time of upheaval in many parts of the world, may have had something to with it.

Skip to content