Learning from the Experts:  Ethnoarchaeological insights on multispecies lifeways and mobile settlement among North and Inner Asian hunter-reindeer herders

Learning from the Experts:  Ethnoarchaeological insights on multi-species life-ways and mobile settlement among North and Inner Asian hunter-reindeer herders

A talk by Henny Piezonka

(Professor, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany)

In parts of the North and Inner Asian forest zone, economies based on hunting, gathering and fishing have been the dominating lifeways until recently, and in some regions continue to play a major role today. These taiga environments also saw the development of alternative, small-scale types of animal husbandry, combined with a strong persisting element of foraging lifestyles. In my talk, I will focus on reindeer herding as practiced by Indigenous communities in the West Siberian taiga and in Northern Mongolia. Ethnohistorical sources and a wealth of traditional ecological and cultural knowledge of the local partner groups (Selkup and Khanty in Siberia, Dukha in Mongolia) inform ethnoarchaeological approaches towards a better understanding of the mutual dependency between human societies and non-human persons and entities in complex multi-species systems, and the interconnections of these systems with mobility and settlement strategies. One aspect the talk will take into view is the role of biting insects as a central, but archaeologically neglected, driver in these systems. An in-depth understanding of these interrelations and their variability is an important precondition for archaeologists to approach the life worlds and cultural possibilities of the past in a more relevant way.