Vadim N. Yagodin - Game Drives of the Aralo-Caspian Region

Adapa Monographs

Series Editors: Alison Betts and Barbara Helwing

Executive Editor: Stephen Bourke

The Adapa Monographs series focuses on the archaeology of the ancient Near East and adjacent regions from North Africa to Central Asia. Archaeology in these regions is a vibrant and active field of research, further stimulated by issues relating to the loss of cultural heritage to war and other factors. The series is peer-reviewed and published in association with the Near Eastern Archaeology Foundation at the University of Sydney.

The ebb and flow of the Ghrid empire

David C. Thomas

Game drives of the Aralo-Caspian region

Vadim N. Yagodin, edited by W. Paul van Pelt and Alison Betts

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In memory of Vadim N. Yagodin

W. Paul van Pelt

This book is a translation and revised edition of Yagodins Strelovidnye Planirovki Ustyurta, originally published in Tashkent in 1991. The volume is one of the most significant works in Ustyurt archaeology and one of the few that integrates (geo)archaeological, ecological, and ethnographic data. It does not merely reapply knowledge and insights acquired in other contexts but provides important socioeconomic and new primary excavation data that are to a large extent Yagodins own work. Despite its importance, the book is hardly known outside of Russia and Central Asia. A discouragement to foreign readers has no doubt been the fact that it was directed at a Russian-speaking audience. It is hoped that this English translation will make the book more accessible and help academics realise the extraordinary archaeological potential of the Ustyurt region.

In this translation I standardised a few examples of inconsistent use of capitals and numbering. Several measurements and editing errors have also been corrected. The technical terminology has been rendered with phrases specific to the book (e.g. arrow-shaped structures instead of game drives). In translating, a certain loss of the authors writing style and individuality is practically unavoidable and on occasion I deemed it necessary to omit repetitive passages and to edit ambiguous descriptions for the sake of clarity. Although these alterations might seem prominent at times, they never affect the actual substance of the book. Unless otherwise credited, I accept full responsibility for any translation errors in this volume. The ideas and opinions expressed in the text are those of the author Vadim N. Yagodin.

In the course of this translation I was very fortunate to receive the help of numerous friends and colleagues without whose unselfish efforts on my behalf this work could never have been completed. Natasha Simonova (University of Oxford), Olga Kasyanova (University of Cambridge), and Shamil Amirov (Research Institute xiv of the Humanities, Karakalpak Branch of Academy of Sciences of Uzbekistan) helped me with numerous problems of Russian and I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to them. Discussion or advice on a wide variety of topics came from Tessa de Roo (University of Cambridge), who supported me with her patience and knowledge throughout writing this translation. Special thanks are due to Alison Betts (University of Sydney) for inspiring me to undertake this work and for reading the whole manuscript and suggesting improvements on almost every page. I also express my deepest gratitude to my college, Trinity Hall, for providing the technical facilities on which the book was put together and for constituting a convivial and friendly environment in which to work. Finally, I thank my family for encouraging me in all my pursuits. I am especially grateful to my parents, Wim van Pelt and Antoinette van Pelt-Elbers.

Alison Betts

I owe a huge debt of gratitude to the vision, initiative, and academic enthusiasm of Vadim N. Yagodin. Without him, my own long and fascinating career in the archaeology of Central Asia would never have been possible. In 1991 Yagodin was the Director of the Institute of History, Archaeology and Ethnography, Karakalpak Branch of the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Uzbekistan (now the Research Institute of the Humanities, Academy of Sciences of Uzbekistan, Karakalpak Branch). Following the fall of the Soviet Union, he saw the great potential offered by the possibilities of international collaboration and I was one of the fortunate recipients of his resourcefulness. I am also grateful to the Lenin Library, Moscow, which even in Soviet times subscribed to the European language journals that made our contact possible. Our common interest in game drives was the inspiration that brought us together, and although our projects since ranged far and wide beyond mass hunting, we both continued to retain strong interests in this area of research. The study of game drives has seen a recent resurgence due to the wide release of high-resolution satellite imagery and the development of Google Earth. However, the study of such structures through remote sensing provides only a small part of the story. The bulk of our understanding of animal drives, including their dates, the ways in which they were used and how they fitted into the lives and economies of the people who built them, can only be achieved through fieldwork.

When I first began work in Central Asia, I was keen to bring the research of Russian-speaking colleagues to an international readership. This was an imperative in the early days of the Central Asian Independent States when literature was hard to access, and xv few people had the language skills to read it when they could acquire the texts. Since then, the advent of electronic translation, while far from perfect, has been of great assistance in making more material accessible, and the ubiquity of electronic manuscripts has made dissemination of even rare publications widespread. Nonetheless, there is still room for quality translations of key works. Yagodins Strelovidnye Planirovki Ustyurta is a classic study of game drives in Central Asia. It is the most detailed work on this subject to date in all of Asia, Central and otherwise. As such, and in gratitude to Yagodin, I am deeply content to see this translation finally in publication, able to reach a fully international audience and to provide comparative data for what I hope will be many new studies on the remarkable phenomenon of game drives.

Figure P.1 Vadim N. Yagodin and Alison Betts in-field. Photo: Michele Minardi.

I very much thank W. Paul van Pelt for bravely undertaking the translation of Yagodins work and for producing a manuscript of such high quality. His work includes translation, editing, and redrafting of all the illustrations for these sections. The manuscript has also benefitted greatly from new work by Shamil Amirov using remote sensing data which have been incorporated into the original text following translation. This study was carried out prior to Yagodins death and he had an active input into the interpretations of the new material. The University of Sydney provided support and facilities for xvi the work of bringing this volume together. This was achieved in part through a Special Studies Programme Award from the Faculty of Arts for 2013 and as part of a publication program conducted under the Australian Research Council Grant DP130101268. Renato Sala and Jean-Marc Deom of the Laboratory of Geoarchaeology, Al-Farabi Kazakh National University, Almaty, have kindly provided images and shared data and ideas. Don Cleveland has provided much helpful editorial advice for this, among other volumes. Finally, I must thank Nicola Gazzana, without whose infinite patience and support work on this volume would have been impossible.