Arctic Domestication in Northeast Asia: Towards a Long Durée History of Sustainable Resource Use

Southeastern Siberia and Manchuria are famous both as a resource frontier and a as “cradle” of animal husbandry. This paper gives an overview of present and historical research on the ideology of “points of origin” for environmental adaptation with special attention to the history of horse and reindeer pastoralism in the longue duree. The paper overviews recent and pioneering attempts to deduce an environmental signature of domestication (of animals) and links this to landscape history and transformation. The paper touches upon the controversial topic of the compatibility of small-scale reindeer husbandry with small scale and large scale resource extraction with examples taken from the gold-mining industry in Zabaikal’e