Hunting, Herding, and diet breadth. A landscape based approach to niche shifting in subsistence economies (Gobi Desert)

Diet is fundamental and closely interconnected with land-use, technology, and economy. When societies undergo major diet shifts, the entire human niche shifts, including all interrelated aspects of social organization. As such, larger patterns in social organization can inform us about diet in the absence of direct evidence. This study focuses specifically on patterns of land-use in the Gobi Desert of China and Mongolia, a place where direct evidence of diet is scanty due to the poor preservation of organics. The purpose is to explore diachronic changes in the spatial distribution of sites and variation in intensity of site use in order to explore proposed changes in subsistence economies. Here, a reorganization of technology, raw material use, and settlement that began in the early to middle Holocene (“Oasis 2”) supports the idea of diet breadth expansion between the Palaeolithic and Bronze Age. Strategies of land-use during all three periods are considered. The findings offer a foundation from which to build testable hypotheses about local land-use and subsistence, but also a model for exploring such transitions in other regions where direct evidence is scanty (e.g., forest landscapes, many arid regions and the very deep past).