Prehistoric Mongolian Archaeology in the Early 21st Century: Developments in the Steppe and Beyond

There has been a great increase in archaeological research in Mongolia since 2000. Increasingly precise chronologies, regional studies, and the growth of development-driven archaeology are transforming our knowledge of this key region of northeastern Asia. This review summarizes recent work and provides a narrative of the prehistoric and medieval cultural sequences as presently understood. I focus on long-standing key topics: early human habitation, the adoption of food-producing economies, Bronze Age social transformations, and the emergence of central places and large polities. I argue that, on the one hand, Mongolia has unique data and new examples to offer the archaeological community and, on the other, that the prehistory of Mongolia and the steppe are not so different from the rest of the world in its history of research and key questions. This review provides general overviews covering the Upper Paleolithic, Epipaleolithic or Neolithic, and Bronze Age to the Xiongnu period; specific data related to each period provide jumping-off points for comparative analysis and further examination.

• Publication year

  2021

• Venue

  Journal of Archaeological Research

• Publication date

  2021-01-07

• Fields of study

  History

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1007/s10814-020-09152-y
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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