Rock art, altars, burial mounds and standing stones of the Altai Mountains in Mongolia reveal cultural traces of ancient hunters, herders and nomads of the Eurasian steppes. Mapping this archaeology and the significance of its physical settings is the mission of a team of scholars from the University of Oregon.
The team’s effort is moving forward with a newly announced $316,693 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. NEH Chairman Bruce Cole announced his agency’s support, which will allow the UO team to integrate the geospatial data, metadata and photographic documentation for the development of an interactive Web site and cultural atlas publication.
The team is led by Esther Jacobson-Tepfer, professor of art history, and James E. Meacham, senior research associate in the department of geography and director of UO’s InfoGraphics Lab. Other members include colleagues in the UO InfoGraphics Lab, the Knight Library and Eugene photographer Gary Tepfer.
After 12 summers of fieldwork, archaeological and art historical investigations, and countless hours in the lab, the UO team will be able to publish tools that will assist others involved in cultural resource analysis, documentation and management.
The NEH grant for the Mongolian Altai Inventory will support development of two reference resources: an interactive, geospatial and photographic Web site and a published Cultural Atlas of the Ancient Mongolian Altai. The Web site will detail the surface archaeology of the region, catalog and analyze monument distribution within the landscape, and discuss the sites’ relationships to physical features of the region. The atlas will be an extensively narrated, hard-copy publication that displays the various geospatial and photographic materials.
The region of study is at the intersection of north and central Asia and at the border between the lands of ancient Chinese culture and the nomadic steppe world. The geography is covered by a web of altars, burial and ritual mounds, standing stones and stone figures, which represent ancient culture over thousands of years. The region also is at risk, the researchers said.
Bayan Olgiy aimag, the locus of this study, is a mountainous province in northwestern Mongolia. The landscape and ancient archaeology are threatened by growing interest in mining for minerals, tourism and climate change. Increased accessibility to tourists, a lack of supporting infrastructure and little government oversight have led to visible deterioration and loss of cultural materials, the UO team reports.
The team’s work offers the only available comprehensive survey of the region.
The UO project is associated with a larger international effort sponsored by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s World Heritage Centre to address threats to the preservation of the natural and cultural wealth of the high Altai Mountains in Russia, Mongolia, China and Kazakhstan. The ESRI Press will publish the Cultural Atlas of the Ancient Mongolian Altai after the completion of the grant in 2009.
Source: Esther Jacobson-Tepfer, professor of art history, (541) 346-3677, ejacobs@oregon.uoregon.edu
Links: http://geography.uoregon.edu/infographics/projects/altai.htm