Occupation of highland Central Asia: New evidence from Kurteke rockshelter, Eastern Pamir

Abstract

The highlands of Central Asia played a crucial role in cultural development across the later Holocene, serving to foster the diffusion of cultural elements by late prehistoric populations and to support the trans-Eurasian exchange routes of the historic Silk Road. However, the early chronology of human occupation in many areas of Inner Asia – particularly the high Pamir Mountains – remains poorly understood. Intensive archaeological study of this area by Soviet archaeologists first began between 1950 and 1970, at which time scholars theorized that the earliest human occupation in the high valleys dates to the Final Pleistocene. To explore early human history in this key region of cultural transmission, a joint expedition conducted new excavations at the archaeological site of Kurteke, confirming that there was human presence in the area as far back as 14 ka BP, and that it persisted discontinuously until the Bronze Age (ca. 4000BP). We applied a multidisciplinary archaeological and paleoenvironmental approach to investigate early human activity at the site, including lithic analysis, absolute dating, and zooarchaeological and archaeobotanical analyses.