Pastoral nomadic regional confederations, states, and empires have assumed a prominent place in the histories of the Eurasian steppe zone; however, anthropological theory devoted to understanding these political systems is still debated and relatively inchoate. A major question concerns the techniques of political integration that might have brought together dispersed mobile herders under the aegis of these complex, large-scale steppe polities. The first such polity in East Asia, the Xiongnu state (c. 250 BC–150 AD) of Mongolia, has been characterized as a polity built by mobile herders, but in fact the steppe populations of this period followed quite diverse lifeways. Most notably, the establishment of more permanent settlements for craft and agricultural production has complicated the typical narrative of the pastoral nomadic eastern steppe. This study considers ways to conceptualize these interesting variations in lifeway during the Xiongnu period and raises the question of how they might have promoted a novel Xiongnu political order. We analyze transformations within the Egiin Gol valley of northern Mongolia to better understand the organizational, productive, and settlement dynamics and present the first regional landscape perspective on the local transformations incurred by the creation of a Xiongnu agricultural hub. To understand these radical changes with respect to the long-term pastoral nomadic and hunting-gathering traditions of the valley’s inhabitants, Salzman’s flexibility-based model of multiresource pastoralism is of great use. Egiin Gol valley transformations indeed attest to a scale of political economy far beyond the bounds of this local area and suggest an innovative role for indigenous farming in Eurasian steppe polity building.
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The earliest herders of East Asia: Examining Afanasievo entry to Central Mongolia
The Afanasievo world reportedly overlaps the borders of five nations including two countries of East Asia: Mongolia and China. Across these several regions, the first appearance of domestic herd animals (sheep, goat, cattle) and the initial practice of copper and bronze metallurgy are associated with Afanasievo communities. Since mobile pastoralism has long been a significant part of the Mongolian cultural tradition the question of when, where, and how Afanasievo groups entered Mongolia is of extreme interest to archaeologists. Over the past 50 years several important sites have been reported and analyzed but these are still little known among Western scholars. In this study we provide a brief overview of Afanasievo archaeology, its peripheries, and its recent analytical breakthroughs and then develop a unique perspective on the Afanasievo world from its farthest eastern edge in central Mongolia. We assess the different roles of migration and diffusion in the process of herd animal introduction and present two current hypotheses explaining the intensification of pastoralism in this region during the late 3rd and early 2nd millennium BC. We argue that the impact of Afanasievo entry into East Asia was a transformative process but must be understood in the context of significant innovations made by East Asian indigenous communities, eventually leading to a unique form of eastern steppe pastoralism in Mongolia.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1737687
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10284177
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Archaeological research in Asia
- Volume:
- 26
- Issue:
- 100264
- ISSN:
- 2352-2267
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 1-19
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ara.2021.100264
