Mapping Karakorum, the capital of the Mongol Empire

There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.

ABSTRACT

In the thirteenth century AD, the city of Karakorum was founded as the capital of the Mongol Empire. Relatively little archaeological attention, however, has been directed at the site and the phenomenon of steppe urbanism. The authors report new magnetic and topographic surveys of the walled city and the surrounding landscape. The resulting maps reveal the city in unprecedented detail. Combining the magnetic and topographical data with aerial photographs, pedestrian surveys and documentary sources reveals the extent, layout and organisation of this extensive settlement. Road networks and areas of variable occupation density and types of activities deepen our understanding of this important commercial hub and royal palace, which is conceptualised as a form of ‘implanted’ urbanism.

Related collections

Most cited references 23

Record: found
Abstract: not found
Book: not found

Archaeological Survey

E. Banning (2002)

0 comments Cited 34 times – based on 0 reviews

Bookmark

Record: found
Abstract: found
Article: found

Is Open Access

Urban Labels and Settlement Trajectories

Roland J Fletcher (2020)

Archaeology has conventionally managed information about settlements into a set of types: campsite-encampment, hamlet-village, and town-city. These were tightly defined but have now become rather less specific. They are broadly understood as categories of different magnitude and still tend to be framed within a stage-theory premise of linear transformation from smaller settlements with more mobile communities to larger ones with less mobile communities. However, what has become apparent is that the agrarian-based urbanism contains compact, high-density settlements with sedentary populations and dispersed, low-density settlements of considerable size and also contains urban settlements which were seasonal and entirely mobile. In addition, it is now clear that definitions of urbanism are regionally specific and that global definitions have become tenuous and increasingly decoupled from material actuality. Therefore, to communicate cross-regionally we need to respect regional uniqueness and analyse the dynamic trajectories of urban settlements as the basis for consistent global cross-comparison of patterns of difference.

0 comments Cited 16 times – based on 0 reviews      Review now

Bookmark

Record: found
Abstract: not found
Article: not found

Disembedded Capitals in Western Asian Perspective

ALEXANDER JOFFE, A. Joffe (1998)

0 comments Cited 6 times – based on 0 reviews      Review now

Bookmark

All references

Author and article information

Contributors

Jan Bemmann: (View ORCID Profile)

Journal

Title: Antiquity

Abbreviated Title: Antiquity

Publisher: Antiquity Publications

ISSN (Print): 0003-598X

ISSN (Electronic): 1745-1744

Publication date (Electronic): November 04 2021

Pages: 1-20

Article

DOI: 10.15184/aqy.2021.153

SO-VID: af03d731-0ae3-41ba-8347-7528f78452e6

License:

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

History

Data availability:

Comments

Comment on this article

scite_

Smart Citations

Citing PublicationsSupportingMentioningContrasting

View Citations

See how this article has been cited at scite.ai

scite shows how a scientific paper has been cited by providing the context of the citation, a classification describing whether it supports, mentions, or contrasts the cited claim, and a label indicating in which section the citation was made.