Investigation of Krasnyi Yar, Kazakhstan: A Possible Locus for Early Horse Domestication

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With National Science Foundation support Dr. Sandra Olsen and her colleagues will conduct three seasons of excavation at the archaeological site of Krasnyi Yar located near the city of Kokshetau in Kazakhstan. The goal of the research is to trace the origins of horse domestication. This is one of the least understood aspects of Eurasian prehistory and yet the impact of that innovation changed the world enormously. To date, prehistorians do not know with any precision when or where incipient horse domestication arose. The forest-steppe and steppe zones East of the Ural mountains were prime habitat for wild horses after the end of the last ice retreat and the adaptive success of wild horses over any other large game in the West Siberian Plain of Russia and northern Kazakhstan led to heavy dependence on horses as a source of hunted food by local cultures. During the Neolithic period in the fourth millennium B.C. between 40% and 90% of faunal assemblages at archaeological sites consist of horse. This intensive hunting may have set the stage for horse domestication by providing indigenous cultures with access to plentiful wild herds and the opportunity to gain an intimate knowledge of equine behavior. The large Neolithic site of Krasnyi Yar is virtually intact and consists of over a hundred pithouse dwellings. Sites of this type are rich in well preserved faunal remains as well as stone and bone artifacts. Over the course of three field seasons Dr. Olsen and her colleagues will excavate three of these houses and test outlying areas. The analysis will focus on the faunal remains and include an intensive metric study, demographic profiling, determination of season of death and a detailed study of butchery practices. Evidence of domestication will be sought primarily in the careful reconstruction of herd demography and in assessment of the distribution of skeletal elements. Analysis of other features at the site will be directed toward reconstructing subsistence, mobility and connections with more distant groups. The question of horse domestication is of far reaching historical and anthropological significance. Domestication and subsequent use of horses for transport enabled people to exploit much broader territories than ever before possible. Their use for carrying both people and objects transformed steppe dwellers into a powerful mobile force who had an impact far beyond the boundaries of the central steppe and provided new vectors for the movement of resources, finished goods and cultural traditions across vast distances into western Asia and Europe. This research will shed new light into the origins of this process.