Byambaa Gunchinsuren

Mongolian Academy of Sciences · Institute of Archaeology

Stratified Middle Paleolithic industries in Mongolia are mostly known from final Middle Paleolithic complexes in the Orkhon and Kharganyn Gol valleys in the north-central part of the country, while Middle Paleolithic complexes from Tsagaan Agui have not attracted as much attention. Re-analysis of archaeological collections made during excavations o...

This article examines the formation processes of combustion features at the Orkhon 7 Paleolithic site in central Mongolia, employing a new multifaceted approach that combines spatial analysis with computer learning and micro-charcoal analysis. We analyzed material from excavations conducted in the 1980s (Archaeological Horizon 3 in Pits 2 and 3) an...

Prace polsko-mongolskiej ekspedycji archeologicznej w masywie górskim Bogdyn Nuruu (Arts Bogd; wschodnia część Ałtaju Gobijskiego w południowej Mongolii) i jego otoczeniu były okazją do przeprowadzenia szerokiego zakresu badań geologicznych (ryc. 1). Szczegółowe prace w celu określenia genezy prowadzono w małym kompleksie jaskiń, w których odkryto...

Beginning in the Middle Palaeolithic, human populations penetrated areas of Central Asia that are today characterised by extremely arid conditions. Mongolia's Gobi Desert comprises one such region. Tsagaan Agui Cave presents an example of the later Pleistocene occupation of this area, containing stratified evidence of diachronic, intense human and...

Northern Mongolia and southwest Transbaikalia, encompassing the Selenga River Basin, constitute the geographical core of the earliest known Initial Upper Paleolithic (IUP) laminar industries. Comparison of the broad spectrum of criteria presented here allows reconstructing variability within these IUP industries, determining regional traits in sett...

Upper Palaeolithic microlithic complexes in Northeast Asia are usually included in the spectrum of non-geometric industries. Mongolia, which is considered a possible crossroads of Middle and Upper Paleolithic migration routes due to its environmental and geographic conditions, is the only exception in this vast region. The Tolbor cluster of sites i...

Throughout the arid lands of Africa and Eurasia, camelids facilitated the expansion of human populations into areas that would not likely have been habitable without the transportation abilities of this animal along with the organic resources it provides, including dung, meat, milk, leather, wool, and bones. The two-humped, Bactrian, species of Cam...

The Mammoth Faunas, the famous cold‐adapted mammal assemblages, were distributed widely across northern Eurasia and North America during the Late Pleistocene. The now extinct woolly rhinoceros, Coelodonta antiquitatis, was a major component. Abundant fossil remains of this species with radiocarbon dates have been reported through almost all of nort...

The article considers the lithic assemblage of archaeological horizon 4a of Tolbor 4 site in Northern Mongolia (excavation campaign of 2017) in the context of development of Early Upper Paleolithic lithic industries during MIS-3 stage. On the basis of radiocarbon dates, stratigraphic position and techno-typological features of lithic assemblage thi...

Structural and thermodynamic factors which may influence burnt bone survivorship in archaeological contexts have not been fully described. A highly controlled experimental reference collection of fresh, modern bone burned in temperature increments 100–1200˚C is presented here to document the changes to bone tissue relevant to preservation using Fou...

Here, we present initial results of a new course of research being carried out at the Moiltyn-am, Orkhon-1, and Orkhon-7 Paleolithic sites in the Orkhon River Valley, central Mongolia. Our research focuses on the Moiltyn-am site, which preserves a cultural and chronological sequence from the Final Middle to the Late Upper Paleolithic. Results from...

The authors present results of excavations of the Tolbor 21 and Tolbor 4 sites, situated in the Tolbor River valley, a tributary of the Selenga River, Northern Mongolia. In 2021, studies of the multilayered Tolbor-21 site that documents human habitation throughout the Upper Paleolithic were resumed. We focus on the stratigraphy, spatial distributio...

Tsagaan Agui Cave, situated in Tsagaan Tsakhir limestone massif in the Gobi Altai Mountains of southern Mongolia, is the one of the rare stratified Holocene archaeological sites known in the Gobi Desert. During 1995-2000 excavation campaigns, cultural material spanning the late Bronze Age through the ethnographic present was recovered. In 2021, an...

Middle and Upper Paleolithic human migrations and dispersals throughout Central Asia are usually associated with middle altitudes and mild steppe and forest-steppe environments with herds of large game mammals. However, since at least the Middle Paleolithic, human populations penetrated areas of Central Asia characterized by extreme arid climatic a...

Ostrich eggshell bead-making appears relatively early in regions inhabited by ostriches. This type of personal ornamentation emerged in Central Asia together with human populations associated with the laminar Initial Upper Paleolithic culture about 45,000 uncal BP or slightly earlier. Eggshell beads and pendants occur in Central Asia until the Midd...

В статье рассматриваются результаты нового цикла исследований палеолитических памятников в долине р. Орхон (Центральная Монголия) — Мойлтын ам, Орхон-1, Орхон-7. Основное внимание уделяется памятнику Мойлтын ам, материалы которого представляют культурно-стратиграфическую последовательность от финального среднего до позднего верхнего палеолита. Полу...

DNA analyses of an early East Asian Ancient, anatomically modern humans interbred with the archaic hominins Neanderthals and Denisovans. However, the extent of this interbreeding and how it affects modern populations is not well understood. Massilani et al. generated genome-wide data from a 34,000-year-old female individual from the Salkhit Valley...

In Central and East Asia, the Upper Paleolithic dates as early as 45 ka cal BP, but until recently, there was little reliable information concerning human occupation during the following period, between 45 and 40 ka cal BP. Here we present results of the excavation of the site of Tolbor-21, in the Selenga drainage system, Northern Mongolia. We focu...

We present analyses of the genome of a ~34,000-year-old hominin skull cap discovered in the Salkhit Valley in North East Mongolia. We show that this individual was a female member of a modern human population that, following the split between East and West Eurasians, experienced substantial gene flow from West Eurasians. Both she and a 40,000-year-...

Little is known about the acquisition and transport of rare or “exotic” raw materials in the Initial Upper Paleolithic (IUP). A recently discovered perforated muscovite (mica) flakelet at the Kharganyn Gol 5 site in the middle Selenga Basin of Mongolia raises the question of how far ancient humans ranged to access this material. Here, we present th...

Archaeological sites with unclear conditions of sediment accumulation and stratigraphic disturbances are always complicated to research. Usually other sites in the region with better preservation of cultural layers helps to understand and divide them into cultural chronological stages. However lack of such sites results in the need to find other ap...

The fossil record suggests that at least two major human dispersals occurred across the Eurasian steppe during the Late Pleistocene. Neanderthals and Modern Humans moved eastward into Central Asia, a region intermittently occupied by the enigmatic Denisovans. Genetic data indicates that the Denisovans interbred with Neanderthals near the Altai Moun...

Well-stratified Middle Palaeolithic assemblages are extremely rare in Mongolia. Initially investigated between the 1960s and 1990s, three major Middle Palaeolithic sites in the Orkhon Valley of central Mongolia yielded a large quantity of data and generated many research questions that still await answers. Re-investigation of these sites has uncove...

A Pleistocene deposit of jasper cores was discovered in the Gobi Altai Mountains, within the Arts Bogdyn Nuruu massif in southern Mongolia. It was situated on a mountain ridge above the Khutul Usny valley at a height of ca. 1500 m a.s.l., away from human settlement (N44°16′09.3″, E102°53′41.5″). Examination of traces of the artefacts’ use proved th...

A skullcap found in the Salkhit Valley in northeast Mongolia is, to our knowledge, the only Pleistocene hominin fossil found in the country. It was initially described as an individual with possible archaic affinities, but its ancestry has been debated since the discovery. Here, we determine the age of the Salkhit skull by compound-specific radioca...

Mongolia is well known for its history of nomadic pastoralism and Bronze and Early Iron Age burials and monuments. It wasn't until later in the Iron Age that the first large fortified towns and urban centers were built by the Uygher and Khitan Khanates. One of these, Baibalyk is believed to have been established in 758 CE by the Uygher khagan, Baya...

The problem of cultural and genetic relationships in the Upper Paleolithic of Trans-Baikal and Northern Mongolia is directly related to the stages of settlement of these territories. Critical review of the Siberian and Mongolian records revealed that the IkhTulberiin-Gol (Tolbor) Valley in Mongolia has a most densest concentration of stratified sit...

The territories of modern Mongolia, China and Transbaikalia were inhabited by Struthio asiaticus (Asian ostrich) during the Pleistocene. That species had become extinct there by the Early – Middle Holocene boundary, but had shared its home range with early modern humans, which there is a limited evidence suggesting their active use of ostrich eggsh...

A skeleton of rhinocerotid have been found from the Late Pleistocene deposit in Ondorkhaan, eastern Mongolia. The material is composed of one individulal skeleton without skull. Its detailed anatomical description and identification are in progress.

Situated between the Altai Mountains and the Chinese Loess Plateau, the current territory of Mongolia played a pivotal role in Pleistocene human population dynamics in Northeast Asia with archaeological evidence suggesting the existence of cultural links with southern Siberia beginning in the Late Pleistocene. Here, we present preliminary results f...

Upper Paleolithic complexes of Northern Mongolia are chronologically determined, and represent the cultural sequence with changes, which could be stemmed from gradual evolution as well as migrations of population. The Late Upper Paleolithic was preceded by chronostratigraphic lacuna in 26 – 16 kya, when no one unequivocal evidence of human presence...

Mongolia has many prehistoric archaeological sites that document the lives of the region’s ancient inhabitants, and the florescence and growth of a multitude of cultural traditions, including the Mongols themselves. The persistence of preliterate or nonliterate pastoral nomadic traditions in greater Mongolia through to the ethnohistoric present has...

The vectors of increasing social complexity, rooted in the late Pleistocene and early Holocene prehistoric Epi-Paleolithic and Neolithic adaptations, include one that has proven, globally, to be especially difficult to investigate using traditional archaeological approaches. That pathway, of course, is one that leads to the emergence of early state...

Archaeological investigations in Mongolia over the past century have revealed a rich cultural history ranging from prehistoric times to the late pre-modern era. Mongolia’s unique geographical position in the heart of eastern Eurasia constitutes a nexus of cultural interactions, the innermost space of a great Venn diagram of overlapping spheres of c...

Tolbor-21 site is situated in the Northern Mongolia. The goal of excavation campaign 2016 was to research the western part of this occurrence. Five cultural horizons were uncovered in the excavation area 2: from the Final Upper Paleolithic to the Initial Upper Paleolithic. The last one was not identified here before. Combustion structures with clea...

Basin of the Selenga River with tributaries was one of the most occupied region in the Paleolithic of Central Asia. The recent geochemical and petrographic research indicated that rock mass of high-quality cherts from Permian strata crosses the right tributaries of Selenga. More than 70 Paleolithic occurrences are known in the local valleys of the...

In the Northern Hemisphere, the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) is recognized as a cold and dry period that marks the maximum southward extension of the Scandinavian Inlands in Europe. In Asia, the ice sheet did not expand from the Arctic into Siberia, yet the LGM had a significant impact at high latitudes and elevations, as well as in regions with a co...

Around the world, archaeological predictive models are increasingly important to heritage management by estimating where sites are likely to be located, particularly in un-surveyed areas. Northern Mongolia is well known for its archaeological resources, particularly Bronze Age and Early Iron Age sites, but vast areas remain to be surveyed. This pos...

This paper is devoted to results of the excavation of multilayer Paleolithic site Tolbor-21 in Northern Mongolia. Site is located in the right tributary of Selenga River, in Ikh-Tulberiin-Gol River valley. Site was found at 2010 and tested by test, pits and test trench in 2011 and 2014. a result of exploring works the presence offour cultural horiz...

Despite the well published mixture of archaic and modern features in fossil hominins, a presence of archaic features is still used as a basis for a claim of an archaic specimen. In this paper, the archaic appearance of a hominin fossil specimen from Salkhit, Mongolia, is examined to ask if Salkhit looks archaic because it is an archaic specimen lik...

Numerous questions remain regarding the timing and the context of Upper Paleolithic emergence in Northeast Asia. Available data allow the recognition of a form of Initial Upper Paleolithic (IUP) documented in the Altai circa 45–40 ka 14C BP, and in the Cis- and Transbaikal around −37 ka 14C BP. In Northern Mongolia, a series of assemblages show int...

Based on regularly retouched tools recovered from the Early Upper Paleolithic Tolbor-4 and Tolbor-15 sites in the Khangai Mountains of northern Mongolia, we reconstruct the development of cores from large bidirectional forms for the production of elongated blades to flat unidirectional and orthogonal nuclei. Blanks also became progressively smaller...

This study presents analyses of a unique assemblage of lithic artifacts, 57 large flakes, discovered in the Ikh Tulberiin Gol River valley of Northern Mongolia. The assemblage represents the first Paleolithic cache ever discovered in Mongolia and is an isolated find, not directly associated with a habitation or logistic activity site. Results of us...

Numerous questions remain regarding the timing and the context of Upper Paleolithic emergence in Northeast Asia. Available data allow the recognition of a form of Initial Upper Paleolithic (IUP) (Brantingham et al, 2001) documented in the Altai circa 45-40 ka uncal BP (Goebel et al., 1993, Derevianko et al, 2000, Zwyns et al., 2012), in the Cis- an...

Mountain Bayan Airag is located in the middle of the mountains of the Altai and Khangai ridges and near the mountain people begun to reside from the ancient times and therefore it is rich with petroglyphs, burials, khirigsuurs and other archaeological sites. At this time we aimed to consider and study only petroglyph sites of over 600 depictions fr...

The goal of the Northern Railways Archaeological Project (NRAP) was to develop a predictive model of archaeological site location that could be used to assess the archaeological potential of the railway corridor and help determine where additional baseline surveys should be conducted. To be used as a compliance tool, the predictive model needed to...