Alicia R. Ventresca-Miller

University of Michigan | U-M · Department of Anthropology

Millet is a highly adaptable plant whose cultivation dramatically altered ancient economies in northern Asia. The adoption of millet is associated with increased subsistence reliability in semi-arid settings and perceived as a cultigen compatible with pastoralism. Here, we examine the pace of millet’s transmission and locales of adoption by compili...

Large metal and metal-alloy cauldrons first appear on the far western steppe and Caucasus region during the Maykop period (3700–2900 BCE); however, the types of foods or beverages cooked in and served from these vessels have remained mysterious. Here, we present proteomic analysis of nine residues from copper-alloy cauldrons from Maykop burial cont...

The Xiongnu established the first nomadic imperial power, controlling the Eastern Eurasian steppe from ca. 200 BCE to 100 CE. Recent archaeogenetic studies identified extreme levels of genetic diversity across the empire, corroborating historical records of the Xiongnu Empire being multiethnic. However, it has remained unknown how this diversity wa...

Domesticated yaks endure as iconic symbols of high-altitude frozen landscapes, where herding communities depend on their high-fat milk, transport, dung, and natural fibers. While there is established proteomic evidence for ancient consumption of ruminant and horse milk in the mountains and steppes of northern Eurasia, yak dairy products have yet to...

The initial movement of herders and livestock into the eastern steppe is of great interest, as this region has long been home to pastoralist groups. Due to a paucity of faunal remains, however, it has been difficult to discern the timing of the adoption of domesticated ruminants and horses into the region, though recent research on ancient dairying...

During the Early Bronze Age, populations of the western Eurasian steppe expanded across an immense area of northern Eurasia. Combined archaeological and genetic evidence supports widespread Early Bronze Age population movements out of the Pontic–Caspian steppe that resulted in gene flow across vast distances, linking populations of Yamnaya pastoral...

While pastoral cultures from Mongolia and the dry steppes of eastern Eurasia have had an outsized impact on Eurasian history, the region’s geomorphology, reliance on organic materials, and a nomadic culture that lacks long-lasting architecture on the landscape have conspired to limit our knowledge of important anthropological processes in the deep...

The COVID-19 pandemic has had far-reaching impacts in all segments of life worldwide. While a variety of surveys have assessed the impacts of the pandemic in other fields, few studies have focused on understanding the short- and long-term impacts of the pandemic for archaeology. To assess these trends, we asked survey respondents (n = 570) if they...

The expansion of the Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphates (seventh to ninth centuries AD) brought diverse regions from the Indus Valley to the Eurasian Steppe under hegemonic control. An overlooked aspect of this political process is the subsequent translocation of species across ecological zones. This article explores species introduction in the early I...

The economic foundation of the Xiongnu Empire has often been attributed to nomadic livestock. This stands in contrast to the contemporaneous development of sedentary, often fortified, settlements with evidence for handicraft production and agricultural products. This paper presents the first results of the analysis of the carbon and nitrogen isotop...

Nomads, or highly specialized mobile pastoralists, are prominent features in Central Asian archaeology, and they are often depicted in direct conflict with neighboring sedentary peoples. However, new archaeological findings are showing that the people who many scholars have called nomads engaged in a mixed economic system of farming and herding. Ad...

The Scythians are frequently presented, in popular and academic thought alike, as highly mobile warrior nomads who posed a great economic risk to growing Mediterranean empires from the Iron Age into the Classical period. Archaeological studies provide evidence of first millennium BCE urbanism in the steppe while historical texts reference steppe ag...

The Eastern Eurasian Steppe was home to historic empires of nomadic pastoralists, including the Xiongnu and the Mongols. However, little is known about the region’s population history. Here, we reveal its dynamic genetic history by analyzing new genome-wide data for 214 ancient individuals spanning 6,000 years. We identify a pastoralist expansion i...

The identification of which food sources were important to the diets of Central Asian populations during the Bronze and Iron Age has been heavily debated over the past decade. Stable isotope studies of human bulk collagen have often reported elevated nitrogen isotopic compositions (δ¹⁵N) that were more than one step higher in the food chain than co...

We present the earliest evidence for domestic cat (Felis catus L., 1758) from Kazakhstan, found as a well preserved skeleton with extensive osteological pathologies dating to 775–940 cal CE from the early medieval city of Dzhankent, Kazakhstan. This urban settlement was located on the intersection of the northern Silk Road route which linked the ci...

Ecosystem engineering is an innovative concept that recognizes that organisms impact their environment, and that these changes can be detected over time. Thus, additional datasets from the ecological longue durée are necessary, specifically in response to the onset of the Anthropocene and the impacts of humans and their commensal organisms upon eco...

Pastoralism in Central Asia directed the utilization of natural resources, yet information on livestock management strategies remain scarce. Carbon (δ¹³C) and oxygen (δ¹⁸O) isotope analyses of domesticated sheep teeth are used to identify animal management strategies. Sheep from Kent exhibit an inverserelationship where low δ¹⁸O values coincide wit...

The Eastern Eurasian Steppe was home to historic empires of nomadic pastoralists, including the Xiongnu and the Mongols. However, little is known about the region's population history. Here we reveal its dynamic genetic history by analyzing new genome-wide data for 214 ancient individuals spanning 6,000 years. We identify a pastoralist expansion in...

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

Populations in Mongolia from the late second millennium B.C.E. through the Mongol Empire are traditionally assumed, by archaeologists and historians, to have maintained a highly specialized horse-facilitated form of mobile pastoralism. Until recently, a dearth of direct evidence for prehistoric human diet and subsistence economies in Mongolia has r...

Dairy pastoralism is integral to contemporary and past lifeways on the eastern Eurasian steppe, facilitating survival in agriculturally challenging environments. While previous research has indicated that ruminant dairy pastoralism was practiced in the region by circa 1300 bc, the origin, extent and diversity of this custom remain poorly understood...

While classic models for the emergence of pastoral groups in Inner Asia describe mounted, horse-borne herders sweeping across the Eurasian Steppes during the Early or Middle Bronze Age (ca. 3000–1500 BCE), the actual economic basis of many early pastoral societies in the region is poorly characterized. In this paper, we use collagen mass fingerprin...

A synthetic history of human land use Humans began to leave lasting impacts on Earth's surface starting 10,000 to 8000 years ago. Through a synthetic collaboration with archaeologists around the globe, Stephens et al. compiled a comprehensive picture of the trajectory of human land use worldwide during the Holocene (see the Perspective by Roberts)....

High mobility among Scythian populations is often cited as the driving force behind pan‐regional interactions and the spread of new material culture c.700–200 bce, when burgeoning socioeconomic interactions between the Greeks, Scythian steppe pastoralists and the agro‐pastoral tribes of the forest‐steppe played out across the region. While interreg...

The pace of transmission of domesticated cereals, including millet from China as well as wheat and barley from southwest Asia, throughout the vast pastoralist landscapes of the Eurasian Steppe (ES) is unclear. The rich monumental record of the ES preserves abundant human remains that provide a temporally deep and spatially broad record of pastorali...

As part of our paper we evaluated differences between stable isotope ratios of geographic units as well as between livestock taxa.

Identification of variation in pasture use by domesticated livestock has important implications for understanding the scale of animal husbandry and landscape use in modern and ancient societies alike. Here, we explore the influence of pasture floral composition, salinity, and water availability on the carbon (δ¹³C) and nitrogen (δ¹⁵N) isotopic comp...

Stable carbon and oxygen isotope analysis of human and animal tooth enamel carbonate has been applied in paleodietary, paleoecological, and paleoenvironmental research from recent historical periods back to over 10 million years ago. Bulk approaches provide a representative sample for the period of enamel mineralization, while sequential samples wi...

This paper presents new stable carbon (δ13C) and nitrogen (δ15N) isotope data obtained from human and animal remains from the Kamennyi Ambar 5 cemetery (KA-5) (Southeastern Urals, Russian Federation) and represents one of the largest stable isotope datasets from a single prehistoric site in the steppes of Central Eurasia. These results are compared...

Objectives We tested the hypothesis that the purported unstable climate in the South Urals region during the Middle Bronze Age (MBA) resulted in health instability and social stress as evidenced by skeletal response. Methods The skeletal sample (n = 99) derived from Kamennyi Ambar 5 (KA‐5), a MBA kurgan cemetery (2040‐1730 cal. BCE, 2 sigma) assoc...

This paper explores the utility of oxygen isotope analysis to investigate pastoral mobility in the ancient steppe.

The role of migration and mobility of people across the steppe has often been cited as key to Bronze Age developments across Eurasia, including the emergence of complex societies in the steppe and the spread of material culture. The central Eurasian steppe (CES) is a focal point for the investigation of the shifting nature of pastoral societies bec...

Objectives: This paper investigates infant feeding practices through stable carbon (δ(13) C) and nitrogen (δ(15) N) isotopic analyses of human bone collagen from Kamennyi Ambar 5, a Middle Bronze Age cemetery located in central Eurasia. The results presented are unique for the time period and region, as few cemeteries have been excavated to reveal...

Comparative analyses of human health and diet are often undertaken for consecutive periods of time which exhibit different social formations or material culture. The aim of this research was to test the link between social transformations and corollary shifts in health or diet. Therefore, oral health and dietary intake were examined in successive B...