ORIGINAL PAPER Pastoralist strategies and human mobility: oxygen (δ 18 O p ) and strontium ( 87 Sr/ 86 Sr) isotopic analysis of early human remains from Egiin Gol and Baga Gazaryn Chuluu, Mongolia Michelle Machicek 1 & Carolyn Chenery 2 & Jane Evans 2 & Asa Cameron 3 & Andrew Chamberlain 4 Received: 18 February 2019 /Accepted: 27 August 2019 # Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2019 Abstract The steppes of Central Asia have long been inhabited by communities practicing various forms of mobile pastoralism as their primary means of subsistence. This study explores the relationship between human mobility and organizational strategies at two distinct micro-regions situated within the modern-day borders of Mongolia. Our investigation was based on an analysis of oxygen (δ 18 O p ) and strontium ( 87 Sr/ 86 Sr) isotopes in archeological human skeletal remains (n = 30) from Baga Gazaryn Chuluu, situated within the middle Gobi Desert and the Egiin Gol Valley in north-central Mongolia. The results indicate a marked degree of separation in local baseline values between the two regions, and corresponding variation was observed in the human skeletal samples. Intra-regional comparisons found that most individuals appear to have spent their childhood years within a “local” range for each particular region, with several notable exceptions that likely indicate a greater degree of lifetime mobility for certain individuals. Overall, the results support the probability that mobility patterns in the past were related to subsistence strategies developed within the discrete environmental zones that characterize the central regions of Mongolia. Keywords Mongolia . Bronze Age . Iron Age . Isotopes . Mobility . Pastoralism Introduction By the Late Bronze Age (c.1400–1000 BC), nomadic pasto- ralism constituted the primary form of subsistence across the steppes of Mongolia (Honeychurch et al. 2009; Honeychurch 2013; Orlando 2018). As a lifeway, Mongolian nomadic pas- toralism consists of a multispecies diet and mobility regime that provide humans access to meat and secondary products such as wool, leather, milk, traction, and transport, while at the same time ensuring livestock sustenance, safety, and shelter. Mobile herding practices are dictated by a number of factors that include herd species composition, ecological setting, the wealth and status of individual herders, the development and maintenance of social networks within communities, and most distinctively, the seasonal migration of human households and animals (Fernandez-Gimenez 2000; Khazanov 1994; Fijn 2011; Honeychurch and Amartuvshin 2007). In Mongolia, this intrinsic relationship between food production and mobil- ity emerged between 4500 and 3000 years ago as the region became increasingly more arid and groups sought to utilize more variable or ecologically fragile land resources (Janz et al. 2017; Orkhonselenge et al. 2018). To investigate the relationship between mobility patterns and subsistence of ancient pastoralists in central Mongolia, we have undertaken a program of isotopic research on a selection of archeological human skeletal remains and associated faunal bone material. These materials were recovered from mortuary sites in two discrete micro regions: the Egiin Gol Valley in north-central Mongolia and Baga Gazaryn Chuluu, situated in the northern Gobi Desert (Fig. 1). The main objective of this assessment was to carry out a study of oxygen and strontium isotopic anal- yses at these locations in order to identify patterns of human * Michelle Machicek michelle.machicek@wmich.edu 1 Institute for Intercultural and Anthropological Studies, Western Michigan University, 1903 W. Michigan Ave, Kalamazoo, MI 49008, USA 2 NERC Isotope Geosciences Laboratory, Kingsley Dunham Centre, Keyworth, Nottingham NG12 5GG, UK 3 Department of Anthropology, Yale University, 51 Hillhouse Avenue, New Haven, CT 06511, USA 4 School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Manchester, Stopford Building, Manchester M13 9PG, UK Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences https://doi.org/10.1007/s12520-019-00931-3 /Published online: 17 October 2019 (2019) 11:6649–6662