Radiocarbon-Refined Archaeological Chronology and the History of Human Activity in the Southern Tarim Basin

Xiaofang Ma, Xingjun Hu and Menghan Qiu ()
Additional contact information
Xiaofang Ma: Research Institute of Specialized History, School of History and Culture, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou 730000, China
Xingjun Hu: Research Center for Governance of China’s Northwest Frontier in the Historical Periods, School of History, Xinjiang University, Urumqi 830046, China
Menghan Qiu: MOE Key Laboratory of Western China’s Environmental Systems, Collage of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou 730000, China

Land, 2024, vol. 13, issue 4, 1-14

Abstract: Famous for Taklimakan, the world’s second largest sandy desert, the Tarim Basin in Xinjiang has long attracted researchers from various fields to investigate its paleoenvironment and antiquity. The southern part of this basin is an ideal region in which to investigate the interactions between humans and the environment due to its fragile habitat and prosperous ancient civilizations. However, the lack of direct radiocarbon dating data has caused the chronologies of some of the archaeological sites to be debatable, which hinders our ability to reconstruct historical patterns of human activity and further understand, in a coherent manner, their interaction with the environment. This study reports 25 new radiocarbon dates acquired from ten undated archaeological sites in the southern Taklimakan Desert in order to refine their chronologies. Based on this, a radiocarbon dataset was established to reveal the trajectory of human activity with the support of Bayesian chronological modeling. The results indicate a two-millennium continuous flourishing of the local society since the beginning of the first millennium BCE, as well as a peak of human activity during the Tang Dynasty (618–907 CE). The distinct trajectory of human activity in the southern Tarim Basin revealed by this study provides a solid foundation for further assessments of human–environment interaction in the Tarim Basin and along the Silk Road.

Keywords: the Silk Road; arid region; Taklimakan Desert; Bayesian analysis; social evolution (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/13/4/477/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/13/4/477/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jlands:v:13:y:2024:i:4:p:477-:d:1371600

Access Statistics for this article

Land is currently edited by Ms. Carol Ma

More articles in Land from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().