The significance of local spatial choices and memory and their impact on mobility networks is scarcely recognised in Mongolian archaeology. Here, we present a mapping strategy aimed at disentangling the landscapes of movement and investigating the materiality that accumulated in the palimpsest of the Ikh Bogd Uul Mountain (Bayankhongor, Mongolia). Based on an integrated and diachronic approach, our analysis encompasses a variety of strategies and sources: satellite imagery and historical cartography, a rescaling of the research area and path-centered fieldwork, which we conceptualize as 'linear’ survey. We document Late Prehistoric mounds as well as ‘modern’ springs, pastoral campsites, and paths. They are interpreted as landscape-objects associated with persistent mobility patterns and the construction of local knowledge and identity – in the sense of a nutag or homeland. This study thus contributes to expanding the archaeological information available for a remote and scarcely investigated area and enriching the archaeological approach to a complex and highly mobile context over time. It also offers new insights into how ancient mobility contributed to shaping the local landscapes of movement, both in terms of seasonal pastoral shifts and long-distance networks in the Mongolian and Central Eurasian Late Prehistory and afterwards.

This work was funded by the (2008-2012) JAE-CSIC Predoctoral Program of the Spanish National Research Council; the (2011) Program for Archaeological Research Abroad of the Spanish Institute of Heritage–Ministry of Culture and the (2017–2020) Xunta de Galicia-GAIN Postdoctoral Program. ACGG acknowledges support of the Spanish MICINN and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) under the grant PID2020-115940GB-C22 'Orientatio ad Sidera V'.

Peer reviewed