Reading the Steppe: How Archaeology and Climate Science Come Together in Kazakhstan

What does a frozen lake know about the Bronze Age?

In northern Kazakhstan’s Pavlodar region, an international team of archaeologists and climate scientists is working at the intersection of past environments and human history. By combining archaeology with climatology, the project asks a deceptively simple question: how did people live with their landscapes—and how did they change them?

Lakes as archives of deep time

At the centre of this research are lake sediment cores. Beneath the surface of lakes such as Lake Borla, layers of mud have been accumulating year after year for thousands of years. Each layer captures tiny traces of the world above it at the time it formed: pollen grains from surrounding vegetation, microscopic charcoal from fires, mineral particles carried by wind or water, and chemical signals reflecting temperature and rainfall.

People shaped by climate—and shaping it

Archaeology has long recognised that climate influences where and how people live. Periods of increased aridity or cooling could encourage mobility, alter grazing strategies, or shift settlement patterns. But lake cores also show the reverse: human activity reshaping the environment itself.

For example, the expansion of pastoralism and farming can be detected in pollen records as declines in wild grasses and increases in disturbance-tolerant plants. Repeated grazing compacts soils and alters erosion patterns, which appear in sediment layers as changes in mineral input. Increased charcoal fragments can signal more frequent burning—sometimes linked to land clearance, fuel use, or managing pasture.

These environmental signals align with archaeological evidence on land: changes in settlement density, the spread of metallurgy, and shifts in subsistence practices. Together, they reveal a dynamic feedback loop in which Bronze Age communities both adapted to environmental conditions and actively transformed their landscapes.

Connecting fieldwork, laboratories, and data

This research brings together field science, laboratory analysis, and long-term data integration. Institutions such as the Satpaev Institute of Geological Sciences play a key role in analysing sediments and interpreting environmental signals, while archaeological teams link these findings to material culture, settlement patterns, and technological change.

The work is part of a national Kazakhstani project on the Late Bronze Age of the Irtysh region and the international DREAM project, which explores connections across Bronze Age Eurasia. By aligning climate records with archaeological datasets, researchers can trace how environmental change, resource use, and human decision-making interacted over centuries.

Why it matters

Understanding past climate–society relationships matters not only for archaeology, but for the present. The Eurasian steppe has always been a place of adaptation, mobility, and innovation. By studying how ancient communities navigated environmental uncertainty—and how their actions reshaped ecosystems—we gain deeper insight into resilience, sustainability, and long-term human impact.

The steppe is not just a backdrop to history. It is a living archive, still recording the traces of people who shaped it long before us.