Households and demography at the time of the Mongol Empire –Comparing two valleys of Central Mongolia

人们普遍认为城市生存所必需的生态基础的概念将否定东部草原上这种遗址的存在。随着喀喇昆仑，蒙古帝国的前首都在鄂尔浑山谷，和Khar Khul Khaany Balgas在Khanui山谷，我们专注于两个这样的城市。虽然我们知道人们在广泛的地理条件下生活，但我们既不知道他们如何生活，也不知道他们有多少人。为了确定人们对环境的影响，我们首先需要更好地了解他们的经济追求和从周围环境中开采资源的规模。波恩大学考古学家对喀喇昆仑的考古探索已有20多年的历史，但如果缺乏类似的比较研究资料，仅基于一个案例的解释将缺乏可接受性。因此，研究小组和这一分项目将在严格的系统比较框架内开展工作。迄今为止，这些城市之间的比较工作很少进行，为更深入地了解蒙古草原城市化提供了新的途径。波恩大学最近的调查有助于了解城市本身的布局，但我们只有有限的个人住房和居民的信息。此外，到目前为止，Khar Khul Khaany Balgas的考古研究工作很少。因此，该场地可以被视为高度欠研究，同时也几乎未被触及，这使得它成为拟议项目的一个非常值得研究的对象，也是评估本研究计划中提出的城市影响的完美试验场。该项目将通过以下方式解决这些问题：1）围绕卫星定居点和喀喇昆仑以北的住宅进行系统的行人调查，重点是确定资源地点，2）在Khar Khul Khaany Balgas的不同地区进行挖掘，以发现各种家庭并建立城市的时间轴，以及3）在城市附近的一个可能用于生产陶瓷建筑材料的窑址的挖掘。这将是第一次在城市本身的挖掘与现代数字技术和程序。这些努力反映了城市影响的核心问题：目标是牢牢掌握Khar Khul Khaany Balgas内家庭的经济活动，喀喇昆仑北部景观的各种用途，以及那些对资源造成沉重负担的活动（木材、水、粘土）和废物（废气、灰烬、炉渣），如金属车间或烧窑作业。其结果将有助于关键领域A（结算系统）、B（资源利用）和C（城市供应）。总之，这些结果将提供一个基本的背景，以解释我们希望在关键区域D（环境条件）收集的环境数据中看到的信号。

Common notions of ecological foundations deemed necessary for the survival of cities would negate the very existence of such sites in the eastern steppes. With Karakorum, the former capital of the Mongol Empire in the Orkhon valley, and Khar Khul Khaany Balgas in the Khanui valley, we focus on two such cities. While we know where the people lived in broad, geographical terms, we do neither know how they lived nor how many they were. To ascertain people’s impact on their environment, we first need to arrive at a better understanding of their economic pursuits and scales of resource exploitation from their surroundings. Archaeologists of Bonn University have been invested in the archaeological exploration of Karakorum for more than twenty years, but all interpretations based on only one case study will lack plausibility, if similarly studied comparative data is missing. The research group and this subproject more specifically will therefore work within a strict systematic comparative framework. Comparative work among these cities has rarely been done so far and provides new avenues for a deeper understanding of Mongolian steppe urbanism. Recent surveys by Bonn University helped to shed light on the layout of the cities themselves, but we have only limited information of individual houses and their inhabitants. Moreover, archaeological research endeavors at Khar Khul Khaany Balgas have been very few so far. The site can thus be deemed as highly understudied and also almost untouched at the same time, which makes it a highly worthwhile object of study for the proposed project and a perfect testing ground to evaluate the urban impacts proposed within this research scheme. This project will approach these questions through 1) systematic pedestrian survey around satellite settlements and residences north of Karakorum with a focus on the identification of resource sites, 2) excavations in different areas of Khar Khul Khaany Balgas to uncover a variety of households and to establish the city’s timeline, as well as 3) excavations in a kiln site for the production of probably ceramic building materials nearby the city. These will be the first excavations in the city itself with modern digital techniques and procedures. These endeavors feed into the core question of urban impacts: the goal is to get a firm grip of the economic activities of households within Khar Khul Khaany Balgas, of the varied uses of the landscape north of Karakorum and furthermore of those activities which come with a heavy burden on resources (wood, water, clay) and waste products (exhaust gases, ash, slags), such as metal workshops or the operation of firing kilns. The results will contribute to key areas A (settlement system), B (utilization of resources), and C (provisioning the city). Taken together, the results will provide a fundamental background to explain the signals we will hopefully see in the environmental data gathered for key area D (environmental conditions).