Richard Ciolek-Torello

RICHARD CIOLEK-TORELLO, an independent scholar, Anaheim, California, was awarded funding in April 2024 to aid research on “Uyghur Cultural Heritage Project: Ancient Cities in a Nomadic Pastoral Landscape on the Mongolian Steppe.” Most studies of urban development focus on sedentary agricultural populations. The nomadic empires of Mongolia provide an alternative perspective on urbanism. In 2024, archaeologists from Statistical Research, Inc. and the Mongolian Academy of Sciences, Institute of Archaeology launched a multi-year study of urban centers built by the Uyghur Empire in the 8th Century. Our initial research focused on mapping and modeling two walled towns, Baibalyk and Tsagaan Sumiin Balgas using Drone Deploy and Agisoft Metashape Pro software, and photographing and modeling fragile rammed earth walls, stela, and other monuments with Polycam LIDAR and photographic software. An important aspect of our work was historic preservation; we hoped to create a digital record of these sites and their remains that could be used as a baseline for monitoring their preservation. We also conducted pedestrian and metal detector survey and test excavations at both sites that revealed different methods of wall construction and yielded pottery sherds, roof tiles, bone, wood, and metal. These data can be used to date the construction and occupation of these towns, and to identify exchange patterns and relationships to other contemporaneous settlements and towns as we try to understand the role urban centers played in this nomadic landscape.