 
MICHAEL D. FRACHETTI Assistant Professor, Archaeology PhD, Pennsylvania, 2004 314-935-5870 Website frachetti@wustl.edu |
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MICHAEL D. FRACHETTI Assistant Professor, Archaeology PhD, Pennsylvania, 2004 314-935-5870 Website frachetti@wustl.edu |
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The main focus of my research is on the dynamic strategies of pastoral nomadic societies living in the steppe region, mountains, and deserts of Central and Eastern Eurasia. My work centers primarily on pastoralism in the Bronze Age (~ 3500-1000BC), which is intricately tied to questions of social and economic interaction between regional populations across Central Asia at that time. My theoretical interests center on how social groups utilize economic and political strategies to communicate inter-regionally, and how variability in their economic and social strategies introduces opportunities for reshaping the boundaries of their social landscapes and human interactions. I am also interested in the relationships between pastoral strategies and the environment, and how the choices and ways of life of mobile groups contributed to the formation of wide reaching networks as early as 2000BC (the Mid-Bronze Age). I currently conduct field research in Eastern Kazakhstan, where I am exploring the ways by which pastoral societies employed flexible temporal and spatial patterns of mobility to negotiate ecological constraints as well as alter the political and social conditions of their landscape.
Methodologically, I specialize in spatial analysis and archaeological landscape modeling using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and remote sensing. I have a strong interest in the reconstruction of paleo-ecological, geo-morphological, and land-cover changes in extreme environments (e.g. high mountains, deserts). My current work centers on modeling prehistoric rangelands of mountain and steppe regions of western and eastern Eurasia by analyzing contemporary satellite data combined with paleo-climatic regressions. Within GIS, these reconstructions are paired with data recovered from my regional archaeological survey and excavations, bringing together environmental and social components of the prehistoric context. I am also interested in questions of ecology and adaptive strategies (social and economic) of mobile societies more generally.
Although my fieldwork is primarily archaeological, I also have conducted ethnographic studies of Kazakh pastoralists, and (to a lesser extent) nomadic societies of North Africa and reindeer herders of Finland. I also have carried out research on prehistoric rock-art in the Italian Alps, Roman and Islamic landscapes in North Africa, and Neolithic hunter-gatherers in Finland.
For more information see the overview of the department's research in archaeology.
From Country to Heavy Metal: Ancient Civilizations of the Old World; Landscape and Archaeology.
Frachetti, Michael D.
(In Press, expected winter 2008) Pastoralist Landscapes and Social Interaction in Bronze Age Eurasia. Berkley: University of California Press.
2008 Variability and dynamic landscapes of mobile pastoralism in ethnography and prehistory. In The Archaeology of Mobility: Nomads in the Old and in the New World, eds. H. Barnard and W. Wendrich. Cotsen Advanced Seminar Series 4, 366-396. Los Angeles: Cotsen Institute of Archaeology (UCLA).
2007 (with Alexei N. Mar’yashev) Long-term settlement, mobility, and landscape formation of Eastern Eurasian pastoralists from 2500 CAL B.C. Journal of Field Archaeology 32(3): 221-42.
2006 Ancient Nomads of the Andronovo Culture: The Globalization of the Eurasian Steppe during Prehistory. In Of Gold and Grass: Nomads of Kazakhstan, eds. Chang, C. and K. Guroff, p. 21-28. Washington: Foundation for International Arts & Education.
2006 Digital Archaeology and the Scalar Structure of Space and Time: Modeling Mobile Societies of Prehistoric Central Asia. In Digital Archaeology, edited by Daly, P. et al, Routledge, London
2006 The Dzhungar Mountains Archaeology Project: Reconstructing Bronze Age life in the mountains of Eastern Kazakhstan. In D.L. Peterson, L.M. Popova and A.T. Smith eds., Beyond the Steppe and the Sown. Boston: Brill Academic Publishing, p. 122—141.
2004 Archaeological Explorations of Bronze Age Pastoral Societies in the Mountains of Eastern Eurasia, The Silk Road Vol. 1: 2.
2002 Bronze Age Exploitation & Political Dynamics of the Eastern Eurasian Steppe Zone. In Ancient Interactions: East and West in Eurasia , edited by Boyle, K., Renfrew, C., and Levine, M., vol. 1, McDonald Institute Monographs, Cambridge, pp. 161-170.
Frachetti, M. and C. Chippindale
2002 Alpine space, Alpine time and Prehistoric Human Experience, In European Landscapes of Rock-Art, edited by Chippindale, C. and Nash, G., Routledge, London, pp.116-43.
