Inner Asian Agropastoralism Within the Mongol Empire: Multi‐Proxy Investigations at Sel'Ungur Cave, Kyrgyzstan
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Bibliographic record
Abstract
ABSTRACT Agropastoralism has been a widespread subsistence strategy in Central Asia from prehistory to the present. While significant research has aimed at understanding past agropastoral communities in the region, reconstructing a generalized economic model remains challenging due to the complex topographic and ecological conditions, as well as its social and political variability. It is likely that subsistence strategies were flexible and adapted to local conditions. Most of what we know about these communities comes from burial sites, with comparatively less information derived from temporary encampments or occupation contexts. Caves and rockshelters have been readily used by pastoralists for millennia. In this study, we present the results of a multi‐proxy study of a Holocene sequence from one of the most archeologically significant cave sites in Central Asia: the Sel'Ungur Cave of Kyrgyzstan. We combined chronometric dating with phytolith, carpological, and fecal‐spherulite concentration analyses, as well as micromorphological, micro‐XRF, and micro‐FTIR studies. The deposits are primarily composed of charred materials and ash, forming the fumier facies. Micromorphological and micro‐analytical methods have enabled us to identify penning activities and periodic burning as the dominant site formation processes. High‐temperature burning destroyed diagnostic features necessary for more precise identification of herd animals. Notably, “vitrified” dung fragments were observed and inferred through micromorphology and micro‐XRF. Through phytolith and archaeobotanical analyses, we were able to infer that livestock mainly grazed locally. The low abundance of domesticated plants—wheat, millet, and barley—as well as fruit seeds, such as grape, pistachio, and walnut, points toward the use of these as a supplement to the herder's diet. The presence of local and allochthonous domesticated plant species alongside evidence for herding suggests the implementation of a mixed economic strategy, likely combining transhumance and agropastoralism. Chronological analysis of the fumier deposits indicates that Sel'Ungur Cave was used as a pen between the 12th and 15th centuries.
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Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.005 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it