A Discussion About How The Settlement Archaeology Carried On In The Northern Grasslands Of China

Since ancient times, the nomadic nations who live on Chinese northern grasslands are always appeared in historical records. And these nomadic nations are described as "settled along water and grass, no stable house". The corresponding archaeological work is also affected by these documents and neglect professional study on nomadic settlement patterns.In recent years, a series of archaeological surveys and excavations are processing in East Tianshan mountain area. According to the survey results and the archaeological achievements in Euro-Asia grasslands, we can clearly understand that the nomadic settlements are widespread existed.Settling down will inevitably form the settlements, even the settlement is different from the traditional concept. The methodology named archaeological settlement is based on the research of agricultural settlement, so can we study the nomadic settled by using previous settlement archaeology method? If we can, how should we do?The dissertation is going to make comparison study between nomadic settlement archaeology and agricultural settlement archaeology from three aspects, single settlement pattern and internal structure research, settlements distribution and settlements relationship, the historical evolution of settlements pattern. According to above research, we can summarize the investigation and excavation research methods on nomadic settlement archaeology which are never been done before.