Bioarchaeological Research on Bronze and Iron Age cemeteries in a microregion in the Upper Orkhon Valley, Central Mongolia

在延长我们项目的框架内，我们打算完成我们迄今取得的成果。我们最初项目的目标是调查Maikhan Tolgoi墓地及其周围不同纪念碑类型的仪式景观的创建和使用。由于我们的项目，我们能够展示墓地及其周围的仪式景观在公元前16 /15世纪到公元前5世纪之间被用作墓地。在公元前4世纪到3世纪之间，以及公元13世纪到14世纪的蒙古帝国时期，只有青铜时代墓葬中沉积的动物骨骼得到了证实。三个结构属于历史时期（匈奴时期，公元前3世纪至公元1世纪；回鹘时期，公元8 /9世纪）。我们的研究结果反映了公元前16 /15世纪的一个深刻的根本变化，我们将其与骑马活动的加强联系起来，因为我们在第一时期的骨骼上发现了骑手的侧面。这种创新通常与公元前12或10世纪的变化有关。我们没有发现任何可以追溯到公元前第二个千年上半叶的墓葬。然而，在我们的微区中，有一些结构是我们无法确定日期或研究的。在延长期间，我们打算挖掘这几座建筑，以证实或可能伪造已确定的古迹序列。我们想弄清楚是否有更早的墓葬，以证实公元前16 /15世纪重大文化变革的结果。为了达到这个目标，我们想要调查我们的微区域以南的地区，在那里我们发现了另一个青铜和早期铁器时代的大型墓地。为这个墓地建立一个规划可以回答我们最初提出的关于我们场地独特性的问题。由于我们没有发现来自不同纪念碑类型的死者之间的差异，我们现在将进行dna分析。正如我们在原始应用程序中所述，我们进一步想要分析动物骨骼。由于我们主要挖掘了马头，我们计划检查马的牙齿与锶同位素的关系，以了解马是否表现出与羊相似的价值，或者我们是否必须考虑到马的更大的集水区。

In the frame of the prolongation of our project we intend to complete our results that we have achieved so far. The goal of our initial project was to investigate the creation and use of the cemetery Maikhan Tolgoi and its surrounding ritual landscape with its different monument types. As a result of our project we are able to show that the cemetery and its immediate surrounding ritual landscape was used as a burial ground between the 16th/15th and 5th centuries BCE. Between the 4th and 3rd centuries BCE and during the period of the Mongol Empire in the 13th and 14th century CE only depositions of animal bones at Bronze Age burial mounds are attested. Three structures belong to the historical periods (Xiongnu period, 3rd c. BCE to 1st c. CE; Uighur period 8th/9th century CE). Our results reflect a deep radical change in the 16th/15th century BCE, which we connect to the intensification of horse riding since we detected rider’s facets at skeletons of the first period. This innovation is generally associated with changes in the 12th or 10th century BCE. We did not find any burials that date to the first half of the second Millennium BCE. There are, however, few structures in our microregion that we were not able to date or investigate.During our prolongation we intend to excavate these few structures in order to corroborate or possibly falsify the established sequence of monuments. We want to clarify whether there are earlier burials, in order to substantiate the results of a substantial cultural change in the 16th/15th centuries BCE. In order to reach this goal we want to survey the area south of our microregion, where we discovered another large cemetery of the Bronze and Early Iron Age. To establish a plan for this cemetery allows to answer our original posed question about the uniqueness of our site. Since we did not detect differences between the deceased individuals from different monument types we will now conduct aDNA-analyses. As laid out in our original application we furthermore want to analyze the animal bones. Since we have excavated mainly horse-heads we plan to examine horse teeth with respect to strontium isotopes in order to learn whether horses display similar values as the sheep or whether we have to reckon with a larger catchment area for the horses.