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

蒙古帝国时期的家庭和人口统计——蒙古中部两个山谷的比较

• 批准号: 512944830
• 负责人: Dr. Susanne Reichert
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Abteilung Vor- und Frühgeschichtliche Archäologie
• 依托单位国家: 德国
• 项目类别: Research Units
• 资助国家: 德国
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/512944830?language=en
• 关键词: Households; demography; time; Mongol; Empire

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).

认为城市生存所必需的生态基础的普遍观念会否定东部草原上这些遗址的存在，比如鄂尔浑河谷的蒙古帝国前首都喀喇昆仑和哈努伊河谷的哈库尔汗尼巴尔加斯。我们关注的是两个这样的城市。虽然我们从广义上了解人们居住的地方，但我们不知道他们的生活方式，也不知道他们有多少人。为了确定人们对环境的影响，我们首先需要了解。波恩大学的考古学家二十多年来一直致力于喀喇昆仑的考古探索，但所有仅基于一个案例研究的解释都缺乏可信度。因此，该研究小组和该子项目目前很少在这些城市之间进行严格的系统比较框架内的研究，并为更深入地了解蒙古草原提供了新的途径。波恩大学最近的调查有助于揭示城市本身的布局，但我们对个别房屋及其居民的信息有限。此外，迄今为止，在哈尔库尔哈尼巴尔加斯遗址进行的考古研究工作还很少。因此，可以被认为是高度研究的对象，同时也几乎未被触及，这使得它成为拟议项目非常有价值的研究对象，也是评估本研究计划中提出的城市影响的完美试验场。该项目将探讨这些问题。问题通过1) 对喀喇昆仑山以北的卫星定居点和住宅周围进行系统的行人调查，重点是识别资源地点，2) 在 Khar Khul Khaany Balgas 的不同地区进行挖掘，以发现各种家庭并确定城市的时间表，以及3）在城市附近的窑址进行挖掘，以生产陶瓷建筑材料，这将是城市本身首次利用现代数字技术和程序进行挖掘。影响：目标是牢牢掌握 Khar Khul Khaany Balgas 内家庭的经济活动、喀喇昆仑山北部景观的各种用途，以及那些对资源（木材、水、粘土）和废物（废气、灰分、炉渣），例如金属车间或烧窑的运营。结果将有助于关键领域 A（沉降系统）、B（资源利用）和 C。总而言之，结果将为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提供基本背景。