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A zooarchaeological study on the new evidence of sacrificial horses from Iron Age burial 15 in the Kalasu cemetery, Xinjiang, China

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Abstract

This research presents age class and gender ratio for 13 horses from burial 15 of the Kalasu cemetery in Habahe County, Aletai Region, Xinjiang, western China. Through the identification of horse age and gender and examination of abnormalities revealed on teeth, vertebrae, and limb bones, the authors analyzed possible strategies practiced by prehistoric society for the selection of horses for burials and also confirmed the evidence of horseback riding shown on skeletal morphologies. By zooarchaeological research at the first time in this area, this research provides important evidence for horse exploitation strategies of nomads in the early Iron Age in northern Xinjiang, China.

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Acknowledgments

Doctor Xianglong Chen gave valuable feedback on the earlier drafts. Special thanks to Professor Jing Yuan, Professor Haotian Wang, and Doctor Peng Lü for their contributions on conservation of horse bones of burial 15 in the Kalasu cemetery, to Professor László Bartosiewicz for his suggestions on pathologies and slaughter patterns, and to Tongyuan Xi, Jiajing Wang, Yahui He, Jingbo Li and Qiong Huo for their suggestions on this paper. Last but not least, we want to express our deep gratitude to the two anonymous reviewers for their detailed and constructive comments. This project was sponsored by Chinese National Social Science Fund (16CKG021).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Capital Normal University, Beijing, China

    Yue You

  2. Xinjiang Institute of Cultural Heritage and Archaeology, Urumqi, China

    Jianjun Yu

  3. Department of Archaeology, University of Sydney, Camperdown, NSW, 2006, Australia

    Alison Betts & Peter Weiming Jia

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  1. Yue You
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  2. Jianjun Yu
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  3. Alison Betts
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  4. Peter Weiming Jia
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Correspondence to Jianjun Yu.

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You, Y., Yu, J., Betts, A. et al. A zooarchaeological study on the new evidence of sacrificial horses from Iron Age burial 15 in the Kalasu cemetery, Xinjiang, China. Archaeol Anthropol Sci 12, 51 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12520-019-00980-8

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