Scientists of Altai State University and Queen’s University Belfast found out that farming in Altai appeared in the Bronze Age
Laboratory of Queen’s University Belfast is a recognized world leader in the study of the environment in antiquity. Thanks to the installation of accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) here, archaeologists from all over the world resort to the laboratory's services. Scientists of Altai State University have been cooperating with the centre for more than five years, directly with the centre's research fellow, Dr. Svetlana Svyatko.
"Using the laboratory method performed on the accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) installation, we analyze samples of human and animal bones from excavations in the forest-steppe of Altai, we obtain those isotopes that mark certain processes in the lives of ancient people, in particular, we determine the diet of an ancient person,” the leading researcher of the Laboratory for Interdisciplinary Research of Archaeology of Western Siberia and Altai at Altai State University, Candidate of History Dmitry Papin said. "We started with simple tasks on the radiocarbon dating of archaeological samples and gradually came to the solution of fundamental scientific problems in the field of the application of isotope analysis in bioarchaeological studies. These data are used to study the processes of adaptation of ancient people to the environment.”
Currently, the scientists of Altai State University and Great Britain are working on a project related to modeling of life support systems for the ancient population in the south of Western Siberia on the basis of analytical methods of isotope geochemistry.
Altai has always been associated with migration flows, beginning with the influx of huge masses of Indo-European population in the Bronze Age (Afanasevo and Andronovo cultures), the movement of tribes from West to East in the Scythian Epoch, or the reverse processes of nomadic Asian peoples' migration during the Middle Ages. According to the researchers, Altai is the place where these processes are reflected in the paleodiet of the ancient man to the fullest extent possible.
"Based on the results of our recent joint research with Svetlana Svyatko, we recorded that at the end of the Bronze Age (12th–10th centuries BC) in the forest-steppe of Altai, there were isotope signals about human consumption of cereals, particularly millet. Earlier, archaeologists found grains of wheat in ancient ceramics, but now on the remains of the bones of an ancient man we received an accurate signal about the use of grain crops during this period, although it was believed that agriculture in developed forms on the territory of Altai was introduced with the arrival of the Russian population, and previously it was primarily connected with the Middle East and China. In this regard, we can confidently talk about an important discovery in archaeology," Dmitry Papin emphasized.