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http://hdl.handle.net/10261/130643

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Archaeology of a sacred mountain. Mounds, water, mobility, and cosmologies of Ikh Bogh Uul, Eastern Altai Mountains, Mongolia

Abstract

[is] The tremendous elevation of the mountains of Ikh Bogd Uul and Lake OROG Nuur, located on the territory of Bogd Council, Bayankhongor Province, in Central South Mongolia, constitute the cultural and physiographic framework for my doctoral research. The main archaeological approach is the monumental, funerary and sacred landscape of the mountain, and its spatial articulation through funerary tunnels of the age of Bronze and Hierro, probably associated with small communities with a very high degree of mobility, and shared rituals and cosmologies. The landscape of the Ikh Bogd Uul mountain includes outstanding features such as protohistorical funerary tunnels and breakfast art, but also oboo, traditional stone altars and stupa, or Buddhist mores, while the entire mountain currently retains significant symbolic and sacred attributes. This will investigate not only when and why these monuments were built, if not also for how long they were used, how they were modified and to what extent they influenced the ritual and pastoral environment over the centuries. In this process, I will consider the landscape of the mountain and nearby lake in line with the local and traditional vision, as a single entity: a scenario for the celebration of extraordinary funeral rituals throughout the final pre-history, a morning for the spital of the site, an important economic resource and a symbol of natal land and identity. Through a cosmological, spatial and archaeastronomic approach, I analyse the physical and symbolic proximity of prehistoric tunnels and other traditional structures with heights, water bodies, local mobility and ritual practices over time. I then look at how the ancient remains, and in particular the Tunis, have probably been influenced by the folklore of Mongolia, and how the world’s vision of the local nomadic community can provide an indicative framework for interpreting the pleasant landscape of the Ikh Bogd Uul Mountain. It also delineates the multiform and changing modes through which the inhabitants of the Ikh Bogd Uul mountain built institutional or alternative sacred geography, in relation to the ancestral landscape. The characteristics of the movement, orientation and identification by local inhabitants over time are also investigated. In this integrated process, I consider the archaeological register and the sacred landscape of the mountains from a symmetrical perspective, using archaeology and anthropology of the landscape, cultural astronomy, folklore archaeology and post-colonial theory as theoretical and methodological bases for my research. Thanks to this joint methodological approximation, I intend to generate original and stimulating ideas for a multivocal reconstruction and interpretation of the protohistorical and traditional landscape of the research area. This interdisciplinary method is rooted in a specific approach to indigenous ontologies and world visions of local communities, which I have combined with quantitative analysis of spatial, statistical and archaeo-astronomical data, obtained through the observation of satellite images and four prospection campaigns. Therefore, this investigation is composed of two parts. In the first, through a narrative approach, I rebuild old and modern local cosmologies and symbolic aspects of the Ikh Bogd Uul landscape, based on historical, anthropological and ethnographic records. In the second part of the thesis, GIS, spatial, statistical and archaeastronomical analyses were applied to prehistoric tunnels. In this way, I hope to be able to include traditional cosmological perspectives in the modelling of the archaeological analysis of the mountains of the Ikh Bogd Uul. Through a committed and local post-colonial archaeological practice, I therefore aim to achieve a broader and holistic understanding of the alternation of the sacred geography of the Ikh Bogd Uul mountain, continuously adapted and renewed over time by local communities.

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