The project “Archaeology and Paleoecology of high-altitude ecosystems in Central Asia’s Landlocked Mountains from the Late Glacial to the Middle Holocene » (PaleoCALM) focuses on the peopling mechanisms of the high altitudes of Central Asia. The objective is to reconstruct the climate and the socio-environmental processes characterizing the transition from hunter-gatherer to (agro)pastoral societies. Read more
With their corridors serving as natural pipelines for human movements across Eurasia’s continental interior, Central Asia’s landlocked mountains have formed a major dispersal route for prehistoric populations, cultures, technologies, and other forms of exchange from the deepest antiquity to the present day. Since the end of the Pleistocene, human societies exploiting these regions have played a central role in the diffusion of new techno-economical traditions such as agriculture. However, the mechanisms behind human adaptation to the region’s extreme environments (>4000 m above sea level) and the transition to a production economy are still unknown. Using interdisciplinary research, PaleoCALM aims to characterize the paleoclimatic context of the first settlements at very high altitudes in Central Asia and to explore the processes behind the first transition to food production. In addition, the project will document how these profound changes in human subsistence impacted the ancient environment and shaped animal and plant communities in the very long term.
To characterize these profound environmental changes, human subsistence and lifeways in these high-altitude ecosystems, PaleoCALM proposes a deep-time approach, drawing together rare and important key-archeological sequences dated from ca. 14 to 5 ka cal BP. The archeological sites are located at different altitudes, from ca. 1800 to 4200 m asl, in the Fergana Valley, the Alay Range and the Pamir Mountains.
PaleoCALM’s team members are conducting interdisciplinary studies combining paleoclimatology, archaeology, history, archaeozoology, paleoethnobotany and archaeometry.