Periodic Reporting for period 3 - The Wall (The Wall: People and Ecology in Medieval Mongolia and China)
Período documentado: 2023-10-01 hasta 2025-03-31
The Wall is an interdisciplinary project which combines archaeological, historical and paleo-climatic research. It addresses what is, perhaps, the most enigmatic episode of ‘Great Wall’ construction in China and Mongolia: A wall system located in North China and Mongolia that covers a distance of over 3,500 km. The construction of this complex system, which includes long earthen walls and accompanying ditches, auxiliary structures and roads, is dated roughly to the 10th to 13th centuries CE, but it is unclear who built it, for what purposes, and how it functioned.
Through the understanding of this medieval wall system, The Wall project aims to understand the context, ambitions and administration of long-wall construction in Chinese and world history. Why did some (but not all) Chinese dynasties invest huge amounts of resources in the construction of ‘Great Walls’? What was the social, economic, political and ecological context that allowed (or catalyzed) the construction of such huge projects in China and elsewhere in world history?
The Wall project puts forward novel hypotheses, analyzes them by using advanced recovery and analytical methods, and examines them against a broad archaeological, historical, environmental, and geographical background. Our research hypothesis is that the medieval wall system was not built as a defense against invading armies, but rather as a means to monitor and sometimes stop the movement of nomadic peoples and their herds. The Wall project will test this hypothesis against a more conventional view of this wall (and other long-walls in world history) as a military installation. As part of The Wall project, we will conduct archaeological expeditions to relevant sites in China and Mongolia, collect relevant geological and paleo-climatic data and systematically ‘mine’ the historical records (in Chinese and other languages).
Through the understanding of this medieval wall system, The Wall project aims to understand the context, ambitions and administration of long-wall construction in Chinese and world history. Why did some (but not all) Chinese dynasties invest huge amounts of resources in the construction of ‘Great Walls’? What was the social, economic, political and ecological context that allowed (or catalyzed) the construction of such huge projects in China and elsewhere in world history?
The Wall project puts forward novel hypotheses, analyzes them by using advanced recovery and analytical methods, and examines them against a broad archaeological, historical, environmental, and geographical background. Our research hypothesis is that the medieval wall system was not built as a defense against invading armies, but rather as a means to monitor and sometimes stop the movement of nomadic peoples and their herds. The Wall project will test this hypothesis against a more conventional view of this wall (and other long-walls in world history) as a military installation. As part of The Wall project, we will conduct archaeological expeditions to relevant sites in China and Mongolia, collect relevant geological and paleo-climatic data and systematically ‘mine’ the historical records (in Chinese and other languages).
Because we were unable to conduct large-scale field research, The Wall team devoted most of its time to a meticulous mapping of different wall lines of the MWS. To accomplish this massive project we are using existing maps and atlases, satellite imagery and remote sensing methods. This research is done by the Archaeological Research group (WP I ) produced very interesting results. Not only we were able to identify wall lines that were previously unknown and locate those which were known in their accurate geographic position, we are also able to identify a large number of structures that are associated with the wall lines and were never documented. Using old satellite imagery, from the 1960s and 1970s, we are able to map wall lines and structures that have since been destroyed or covered by modern construction. Using up-to-date, high-resolution multi-spectra and SAR images, we are also able to map features that are buried beneath sand dunes or dense vegetation. Among our more interesting findings so far is the discovery that the southern wall forms a continuous line starting in Northeast China and ending in the southwestern Gobi Dessert. This line, which is some 2,300 km long, has never been mapped and shown to be continuous. Another discovery stemming from our work on this project is the identification of two possible episodes of wall construction that make up the MWS (Fig. 3). Preliminary results of this research were published by our team : Storozum, M., et al., (2021), Mapping the Medieval Wall System of China and Mongolia: A Multi-Method Approach, Land 10(997) https://doi.org/10.3390/land10100997(se abrirá en una nueva ventana). We are now working on the publication of another paper, which will focus on one section of the Southern Line of the MWS and will analyze it using GIS and other analytical methods.
The remote sensing work we are conducting serves as the foundations for a large-scale database that combines geographic information on the location of wall-lines and structures, references to previous publications about some of those features, historical information, and climatic and pleo-climatic data. The construction of this database is ongoing and it will continue to grow as the project develops (Fig 4.). Our final goal is to make it into an open-access database open for other researchers to use. In 2021 we sponsored a small-scale excavation by our Mongolian colleagues of a burial site that we discovered in our preliminary survey. The excavations revealed a well-preserved burial with a wooden frame, a well-preserved human skeleton, bronze and gold burial goods and ornaments, as well as well organic materials (figs. 1 and 2). The grave is dated to the Medieval period. The samples from the grave are sent for radiometric dating and analyses to identify the origins of some of the artifacts, the materials used and the production techniques.
Our Historical Research group (WP II) is systematically collecting data from Chinese sources. They now work on the History of the Liao Dynasty and focus on events and conditions related to the north and western borders of the empire. So far we collected 630 entries of different types: reports on diplomatic missions and interactions with different peoples along and beyond the borders, conflicts, commerce, climatic events and more (Fig. 5). This information is stored in the project's database and connected to our interactive database.
Tal Ulus, a doctoral student affiliated with The Wall project submitted her dissertation, which was approved by the Hebrew University. The dissertation deals with broader issues that are part of The Wall's WP II. Dr. Ulus published part of her research in: Ulus, T. and Ellenblum, R. (2021), How long and how strong must a climatic anomaly be in order to evoke a social transformation? Historical and contemporaneous case studies, Humanities and Social Sciences Communications 8, 252, https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-021-00933-4(se abrirá en una nueva ventana).
Our Paleoclimatic Research group (WP III), is working on collecting published information from paleoclimatic research done in Mongolia and China. We have mapped all the locations where such research was done and this data is also being entered into our database. We put special emphasis on research done at inland lakes and on ancient lake shores and will conduct our own research in Lake Khukh (coordinates: 49.52800 115.57600) in Mongolia in August 2022.
In addition to the research conducted by our team, we have arranged training sessions in different methods to be tested in the field. The training was open to members of our research team, as well as students interested in using such methods (Fig. 6).
The PI of The Wall, Prof. Gideon Shelach-Lavi, has presented the project in academic and popular meetings and disseminated it to different types of audiences in Israel, Europe, North America and China.
The remote sensing work we are conducting serves as the foundations for a large-scale database that combines geographic information on the location of wall-lines and structures, references to previous publications about some of those features, historical information, and climatic and pleo-climatic data. The construction of this database is ongoing and it will continue to grow as the project develops (Fig 4.). Our final goal is to make it into an open-access database open for other researchers to use. In 2021 we sponsored a small-scale excavation by our Mongolian colleagues of a burial site that we discovered in our preliminary survey. The excavations revealed a well-preserved burial with a wooden frame, a well-preserved human skeleton, bronze and gold burial goods and ornaments, as well as well organic materials (figs. 1 and 2). The grave is dated to the Medieval period. The samples from the grave are sent for radiometric dating and analyses to identify the origins of some of the artifacts, the materials used and the production techniques.
Our Historical Research group (WP II) is systematically collecting data from Chinese sources. They now work on the History of the Liao Dynasty and focus on events and conditions related to the north and western borders of the empire. So far we collected 630 entries of different types: reports on diplomatic missions and interactions with different peoples along and beyond the borders, conflicts, commerce, climatic events and more (Fig. 5). This information is stored in the project's database and connected to our interactive database.
Tal Ulus, a doctoral student affiliated with The Wall project submitted her dissertation, which was approved by the Hebrew University. The dissertation deals with broader issues that are part of The Wall's WP II. Dr. Ulus published part of her research in: Ulus, T. and Ellenblum, R. (2021), How long and how strong must a climatic anomaly be in order to evoke a social transformation? Historical and contemporaneous case studies, Humanities and Social Sciences Communications 8, 252, https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-021-00933-4(se abrirá en una nueva ventana).
Our Paleoclimatic Research group (WP III), is working on collecting published information from paleoclimatic research done in Mongolia and China. We have mapped all the locations where such research was done and this data is also being entered into our database. We put special emphasis on research done at inland lakes and on ancient lake shores and will conduct our own research in Lake Khukh (coordinates: 49.52800 115.57600) in Mongolia in August 2022.
In addition to the research conducted by our team, we have arranged training sessions in different methods to be tested in the field. The training was open to members of our research team, as well as students interested in using such methods (Fig. 6).
The PI of The Wall, Prof. Gideon Shelach-Lavi, has presented the project in academic and popular meetings and disseminated it to different types of audiences in Israel, Europe, North America and China.
Our ongoing mapping of the different wall-lines of the MWS and the identification of strictures and features located along those lines goes well beyond the state of the art. As discussed above, in addition to the mapping and locating of previously unknown lines and features, our discovery that the wall was continuous from Northeast China to the southwestern Gobi Desert is novel and allows for a new understanding of the scale of this endeavor and its functions. Our identification of different episodes of wall construction and the existence of parallel wall lines is also new, and it opens new avenues of research, which we will explore in the next years of the project.