Understanding past activities of pastoral nomadic Nenets from Western Siberia using a geoarchaeological toolkit

Nomadic Nenets people from Yamal peninsula (Siberia) were and still are dependent on reindeer herding, which provides them with food, tools, clothes, transport, and trade goods.
Herding activity in these high latitudes depends on fire, mainly for warmth and cooking, but also to create smoke to protect reindeer from insect harassment in summer. Exploring the presence, location, and uses of fire on past and present Nenets herding sites can help us understand how their lifeways and herding practices have changed over time.
Here we present preliminary results from an interdisciplinary approach applied to an ancient Nenets site still in use that used a range of geoarchaeological tools to elucidate past occupation and fire-related activities. Surface surveys for charcoal and burnt bones allowed the identification of modern fire locations, or the locations of ancient fires on eroded sites, and magnetic susceptibility anomalies helped to locate potential buried fires. Herding activity and related past animal presence were tracked by phosphate (presence/absence) and lipid biomarker (origin) analysis.
This multidisciplinary strategy, informed by traditional knowledge and ethnoarchaeology, is making an important contribution to our understanding of the past lifeways and herding practices and their relationship to fire, of northern nomadic pastoralists.