The Steppes: Crucible of Eurasia - units.muohio.edu - Miami University

PROGRAM AND ABSTRACTS
The Steppes: Crucible of Eurasia
November 30–December 1, 2012
Miami University Art Museum
Oxford, Ohio
Funding and support provided by:
The Havighurst Center for Russian and Post-Soviet Studies
The Humanities Center
The Department of History
The Miami University Art Museum
The Center for American and World Cultures
The Department of Art
The Office for the Advancement of Research and Scholarship
The Department of German, Russian, and East Asian Languages
The Department of Anthropology
The Department of Classics
The Department of Comparative Religion
Organized by Daniel Prior, Department of History
1

PROGRAM
This symposium is held in conjunction with the Miami University Art Museum exhibition, Grass Routes:
Pathways to Eurasian Cultures (August 20–December 8, 2012), which includes Ancient Bronzes of the
Asian Grasslands, an exhibition from the Arthur M. Sackler Collections.
http://muamgrassroutes.wordpress.com/
http://arts.muohio.edu/art-museum/
Friday, November 30
9:15-9:45 a.m. Morning coffee
9:45-10:00 a.m. Welcome and opening remarks
10:00-11:20 a.m. Claudia Chang and Perry Tourtellotte, Landscapes of Power and Elite
Settlement at the Cusp of the Saka and Wusun Periods in Semirech’ye:
The Talgar Case Study
Jean-Luc Houle, Empire and Domestic Economy: Continuity and Change
in Mongolia’s Bronze and Iron Age Archaeological Landscape
Moderator: Michael Drompp
11:20-11:40 a.m. Break
11:40-1:00 p.m. Leland Rogers, Ancient DNA from the Elite Xiongnu at Ögiinuur Sum,
Arkhangai, Mongolia
Lois Hale, A Recreation of a Pazyryk Pouch
Moderator: Katheryn Linduff
1:00-2:30 p.m. Lunch
Student Poster Session I (Eurasian Nomads and History; Senior Capstone
Seminar: The Horse in Human History)—in Gallery II:
Robert Fink, Horse Meat Consumption in the United States; Zachary
Horstman, Falconry on the Eurasian Steppes; Thomas Hughes, The Takhi
and Its Cousins: How People Have Interacted with Wild Equid Species;
Laine Lagor, The Horse in the Circus; Andrew Mackin, Creating the
Barbarian Myth; Troy Phillippe, The Horse in Early 20 th Century Film;
Nicholas Schnitzler, America: A Country Built by Horses; Brian Smith,
Eurasian Nomads’ Geneses; Emily Volkmann, Horses of the Mexican-
American War
2:30-3:50 p.m. Michael Drompp, Political Dimensions of Religion in Early Medieval
Inner Asian Empires
Christopher Atwood, The Appanage Community: A New Model for
Understanding Social Structure in the Pre-Modern Mongolian Plateau
Moderator: Yihong Pan
3:50-4:10 p.m. Break
4:10-5:30 p.m. Robert Wicks, Bird-Headed Antler Tines: Stability and Change in Ancient
Eurasian Art
Trudy Kawami, The Image of the Coiled Feline in the Eurasian Steppes
Moderator: Kenneth Lymer
2

Saturday, December 1
9:30-10:00 a.m. Morning coffee
10:00-11:20 a.m. Sergey Miniaev, Ordos Style Bronzes in Russia: New Discoveries
William Honeychurch (co-authors: James Lankton, Chunag Amartuvshin),
Silk Roads or Steppe Roads: Gobi Evidence for Mediterranean Goods in
the Xiongnu Polity
Moderator: Claudia Chang
11:20-11:40 a.m. Break
11:40-1:00 p.m. Yihong Pan, Locating Advantages: The Survival of the Tuyuhun 吐谷渾
State on the Edge (300-580s)
Aleksandr Naymark, Sogdiana–Mawarannahr: The Life on the Edge of
the Steppes
Moderator: Matthew Gordon, Department of History, Miami University
1:00-2:30 p.m. Lunch
Student Poster Session II (Eurasian Nomads and History; Senior Capstone
Seminar: The Horse in Human History)—in Gallery II:
Rachel Blake, What Is It with Girls and Horses? How Societal Needs
Fostered the Love between Horses and Girls; Daniel Brooks, The Horse
and Cowboy Culture: Truth and Tall Tales; Brooke Clifford,
Anthropomorphism: How Our View of the Horse Shapes Modern Society;
Nicholas DiCesare, The Magyar Migration: The Transition from
Nomadism to Sedentarism; Kimberly Foster, Kalmyk Sovereignty: From
Nomadic Supremacy to Russian Ascendance; Vincent Kuertz, The New
World, Plus and Minus Horses; Corey Lack, The Global Nomad: The
Comparison of Native American Indians and Eurasian Nomads; Erin
McCrate, The Modified Horse
2:30-3:50 p.m. Kenneth Lymer, Animals Entangled in Art: The Lives of Zoomorphic
Imagery in Central Asia during the 1st Millennium BCE
Katheryn Linduff, Belt Buckles: Metallurgical and Iconographic Markers
of Distinction
Moderator: Trudy Kawami
3:50-4:10 p.m. Break
4:10-5:30 p.m. Daniel Prior, Integral or Incidental? Indo-European Mythic Fragments in
Inner Asia
Edward Vajda, Between Forest and Steppe: Language and Ethnicity in
Early Inner Asia
Moderator: Christopher Atwood
3

ABSTRACTS
Christopher Atwood, Department of Central Eurasian Studies, Indiana University
(catwood@indiana.edu)
The Appanage Community: A New Model for Understanding Social Structure in the Pre-Modern
Mongolian Plateau
Recent interventions in the study of nomadic societies have left foundational principles in
flux. David Sneath’s Headless State has challenged existing paradigms, yet has also been itself
challenged for skating too lightly over contrary data. While there is much to support in the recent
challenges to the “tribal” paradigm, an alternative paradigm for ground-level social reality is still
needed. Based on current research in thirteenth to nineteenth century Mongolian society, I
propose that the “appanage community” as a fundamental concept for understanding the
interaction of state and society on a local scale in Mongolia. The “appanage community” concept
focuses on the key common aspects to the Qing-era banner, the sixteenth century otog, and the
“thousands” in the Mongol empire, enabling them to be understood not just as a typology, but
also the shape of a peculiar socio-political dynamic. This approach also supplies archaeologists
with a potential model of local interaction to be tested in contexts preceding the thirteenth
century.
Claudia Chang and Perry Tourtellotte, Department of Anthropology, Sweetbriar College
(cchang@sbc.edu; ptourtellotte@sbc.edu)
Landscapes of Power and Elite Settlement at the cusp of the Saka and Wusun Periods in
Semirech’ye: The Talgar Case Study
How did the aristocratic elite nomads controlled the steppe and its vast resources
throughout the first millennia BC ? In the Talgar region of Semirech’ye (Seven-Rivers) along the
northern edge of the Tian Shan Mountains, ancient Iron Age cultures flourished, practicing both
farming and animal herding. This paper explores two central questions: (1) What was the
environmental and economic basis for mixed farming and herding during the first millennium
BCE on the Talgar alluvial fan and (2) How did the mortuary practice of kurgan construction
along ancient stream beds create both an ideological and political symbol of hierarchy among the
‘nomadic confederacies?’
We focus specifically on the Talgar alluvial fan as a land feature that serves as a model
for settlement and hierarchy throughout the Semirech’ye region. Archaeological surveys and
excavations conducted over the past 18 years by the Kazakh American Archaeological
Expedition (KAAE) provide a substantial data base for examining the social evolution of
nomadic groups during the first millennium BC among the Saka (eastern variants of the
Scythians) and the Wusun state. Yet recent studies contradict the ‘nomadic model’ in favor of a
mixed economy of cereal farming and animal herding.
The paleo-ethnobotanical evidence of both seeds and microscopic plant parts known as
phytoliths demonstrates that between 400 BC and 200 BC the ancient herders of the Talgar
region also cultivated wheat, millets, and barley (Spengler et al. in press; Chang et. al. 2003).
Ongoing zooarchaeological research identifies the use of domesticated species of sheep and
goats, cattle, and horses as well as occasional wild species such as roe and red deer, wild pig,
4

fox, and birds (Chang et al. 2003). The recent excavations at Tuzusai, a large settlement in the
Talgar region (ca. 8 to 10 hectares), reveals the existence of both common and elite households.
At the most recent 2012 excavations, an elite platform or plaza area has been identified along
with lower rooms and storage pits.
The goal of this essay will be to summarize our most recent results that now show the
Talgar fan as an agro-pastoral economy where an elite or aristocratic class of individuals, often
associated with the rich inventories found at the burial kurgans controlled the commoners who
practiced multi-resource pastoralism and agriculture. The prominent burial mounds which
dominate the landscape throughout Talgar and neighboring fans served as symbolic
representations of power and hierarchical control over vast territories. The geographic
investigation of other alluvial fans along the base of the Tian Shan will also show the means by
which elites controlled territory through a symbolic landscape of kurgan constructions.
Michael R. Drompp, Department of History, Rhodes College (drompp@rhodes.edu)
Political Dimensions of Religion in Early Medieval Inner Asian Empires
In this paper I will examine some of the ways in which religious beliefs and practices
have intersected with political beliefs and practices in early medieval Inner Asian empires. In
considering the examples of the Rouran and Türks (Chinese Tujue), who dominated much of
Inner Asia from the early fifth to the mid-eighth centuries CE, I will focus on surviving historical
accounts as well as preserved myths in order to search for the presence of mantic-religious
beliefs and practices that could fall within the broad categorization of “shamanism” (which,
admittedly, is a complex and even volatile term). I will then further explore the possible political
connections and ramifications of these particular historical accounts and legends. Finally, I will
consider the relationship of a posited “shamanic-political” complex to a broader “religiouspolitical”
complex; the purpose of this will be to consider evidence as to how shamanic beliefs
and practices may have related to the Rouran and Türk empires’ support of more highly
organized religious beliefs and practices such as Buddhism or the state cult sometimes called
“Tengrism.” Although the evidence at our disposal is relatively slim, my conclusion is that
shamanic beliefs and practices were particularly useful for the promotion or reinforcement of
political legitimacy in Inner Asia; Rouran and Türk rulers employed mythologies, some of them
quite likely borrowed, that indicated – through the evocation of a shamanic world view –
powerful supernatural support for their states. Such mythologies provided ideological support
for these steppe empires and thus helped strengthen their political power.
Lois Hale, Hale! Art, Portland, Oregon (hlutwige@gmail.com)
A Recreation of a Pazyryk Pouch
1. Introduction
In the Altai Mountain region of Siberia called Pazyryk, a group of barrows which
belonged to tribes of Iron Age Scythians were excavated between 1929 through 1949 by Sergei
Ivanovich Rudenko. The excavations of these barrows produced some of the most spectacular
Central Asian artifacts ever unearthed. Among these artifacts was a small pouch which held,
among other things, coriander seeds. Made with leather, felt, and leopard fur, decorated with
gilded copper “duckling” figures and sewn with deer sinew, the pouch is notable due to the
refinement of its construction and beauty of its decorative elements. It was found with other
5

artifacts within a larger leather pouch and had suffered severe damage while entombed. It
captured my imagination and has held my interest for more than a decade. Prior to my first
attempts at a reconstruction I pored over thoughts of the pouch again and again always with the
question in mind, “How was this made?” With only three illustrations and several paragraphs of
text from which I could draw information, its reconstruction has been a challenge.
2. Process
I studied the three illustrations provided in the English translation of “Frozen Tombs of
Siberia” by Rudenko as well as all the pertinent information I could glean from the text that
referred to the construction of this and other like artifacts from the various barrows. Because
there were no dimensions provided of this pouch, I used the illustration of the gilded copper
ducklings which has a 1/1 ratio notation as my base “measurement”. I used it to gain an
approximation of the actual size using the “reconstruction” illustration among the editions colour
plates. After creating several mock-ups of the pouch I was satisfied with the similarity between
my mock up and the illustrations, I moved on to reconstructing the pouch. Sable, which was
found to have been used in other artifacts, rather than leopard fur was used. Cow and deer
leathers were used for the excised decoration, pouch back and interior bag. Felt for the pouch
was made from wool and dyed with madder and alum which according to my research are
common dye stuffs of the time and area. A matrix was carved into a bronze plate for the copper
figures. Deer sinew thread was used throughout the reconstruction process.
3. Conclusion
Over the course of four attempts at reconstructing the pouch I learned new lessons. Real
sinew is versatile and very strong, and not as difficult to make as my early research indicated;
indeed, making it as fine as modern sewing thread is a simple task with practice. The creation of
gilded copper ducks brought its own difficulties—experimenting with matrices, metal plaques
and the gilding thereof. Even the process of discovering how to make a small piece of felt
remotely comparable to those used in the period was a challenge. The levels of craftsmanship
and artistry were exceptional among the people of the Pazyryk. They were highly skilled,
influential and devoted artists and I find myself in awe of their ability to produce such stunning
folk art. In my own endeavors, I continue to be inspired by their example.
William Honeychurch, Department of Anthropology, Yale University (co-authors: James
Lankton, Chunag Amartuvshin; william.honeychurch@yale.edu)
Silk Roads or Steppe Roads: Gobi Evidence for Mediterranean Goods in the Xiongnu Polity
Nomadic peoples of the Inner Asian steppe have long been credited with playing a role in
facilitating exchange along the famous Silk Roads reaching across Eurasia. Steppe empires,
including those of the Turks, Uighurs, and Mongols in cooperation with sedentary merchants,
provided transport, protection, infrastructure, and in many cases negotiated access to some of the
most prestigious Chinese goods traveling westward. However, since the historical record of the
Silk Roads was written almost exclusively within sedentary, urban societies, the organizational
role of nomadic groups and polities is often obscure. This is particularly true during the earliest
period of Silk Road exchange contemporary with the Han Dynasty of China and the Xiongnu
state (3rd c. BC - AD 2nd c.) of Mongolia. Some historians have argued that greater emphasis
should be placed on the role of steppe nomadic groups in creating and sustaining the earliest
forms of Silk Road exchange. Recent anthropological understandings of Inner Asian nomadic
polities and steppe pastoralism suggest new possibilities for conceptualizing nomadic input to the
6

ise of the Silk Roads. In this paper, I explore historical and archaeological evidence for Xiongnu
state interaction with Central Asia and with China and critique the long standing assumption that
eastern steppe nomads were peripheral to or predatory upon exchange between East and West. I
suggest that nascent Silk Road activities were likely a critical part of the political economy of the
Xiongnu state and examine the possibility of nomads as early architects of Eurasian trade.
Jean-Luc Houle, Department of Folk Studies and Anthropology, Western Kentucky University
(jean-luc.houle@wku.edu)
Empire and Domestic Economy: Continuity and Change in Mongolia’s Bronze and Iron Age
Archaeological Landscape
This paper addresses the issue of social and political change from the Bronze Age to the
Iron Age Xiongnu period by investigating continuity and change in the domestic economy in the
Khanuy region of north central Mongolia. My goal is to assess the nature and the degree of
integration of ideology, economy and politics as the region’s populace shifted from a series of
independent small-scale polities to part of an ‘imperial’ state. We now know that during the Late
Bronze Age herders in Khanuy Valley were becoming increasingly complex largely as a result of
local interaction (Houle 2010). Once incorporated into the Xiongnu imperial polity, political
power became markedly more centralized and the political economy more extensive. In
analyzing both pre Xiongnu and Xiongnu Period situations, I focus on the internal dynamics and
the external links of production, distribution, and consumption. I am mostly interested here with
the changes in daily life (or lack thereof) that came about when Khanuy Valley people were
incorporated into a political system that was greater in scale and focused on relationships
external to Khanuy Valley. As radical as some changes were under Xiongnu rule, the evidence is
equally interesting for the economic continuities. Most importantly, households and communities
apparently continued to be largely self-sufficient in their subsistence and utilitarian craft
production.
Trudy S. Kawami, Arthur M. Sackler Foundation, New York
(tkawami@arthurmsacklerfdn.org)
The Coiled Feline in the Iron Age Steppes: An Art Historical View
The image of the coiled feline, considered a typical motif in Scythian art of the 7 th
century BCE, is an art historical puzzle. It has no immediate antecedents in the art of the steppes,
and the excavated examples, which range from the Crimea to northern China, are strikingly
similar in style. Furthermore, they are not randomly distributed, but occur in specific regions.
Even in these regions, the image is found only in elite graves and even then rarely. Objects
bearing the coiled feline are not multiples like the belt and garment ornaments of the steppe
peoples, but are singular works found on horses or associated with horse gear. The sudden
appearance of this distinctive image, its restricted occurrence, and rapid spread across the steppes
suggest that it was an intentionally created emblem associated with the horses of a limited
though widespread elite.
7

Katheryn M. Linduff, Department of Anthropology and Department of the History of Art and
Architecture, University of Pittsburgh (linduff@pitt.edu)
Belt Buckles: Metallurgical and Iconographic Markers of Distinction
Four thousand years ago cultures emerged in the area known variously as eastern Eurasia,
Inner Asia, the beifang (北方), the Northern Zone, or the Northern Frontier. Delineated by
Chinese historians of the second century BCE and later as a never-never land, they gave these
peoples various names that marked them with a heritage distinct from peoples in the Dynastic
heartland. So troublesome was this area for the dynasts, that they eventually set up a system of
‘border states’ and walls in their north that acted as a political, economic, cultural and military
barrier reef meant to protect the ‘civilized’, agricultural states to their south.
The signs of this separation were marked as well with lightweight and portable artifacts
used in the beifang—small in scale but intricate in design—including belt plaques, appliqués for
clothing as well as accompanying horse gear, bits, strap crossers and bridle ornaments and
including chariot and cart fittings in gold, silver and bronze. These were neither Chinese nor
steppic in type or aesthetic, but rather were inspired by both models. These pieces bear motifs of
the wild animals and birds of prey that inhabited the region—tigers, boar, deer, ibex—and
including some domesticates such as camels, horses, donkeys and yaks. Even swords and knives
bear animal ornamentation on their hilts and pommels. These were created for the local
inhabitants and the market, and most often in Chinese foundries, as best as we can tell. They
have often been thought to document a mobile lifeway, although that notion is rethought here.
Study of the metallographic and casting technology used to produce these materials not
only offers a way to learn about their unique character, but also to discern distinctive cultural
patterns and the process of interregional exchange in the region that led to their creation. Belt
plaques, which I will particularly address here, were a very special category—not merely
decorative, but given their final resting place in burial; their special types and iconography; their
resourceful means of production; and their elaboration with inset semi-precious stones and
gilding or silvering, marked them for special use. By the end of the first millennium BCE, they
were in great demand in many areas of Eurasia and both the metallurgical and iconographic
content are distinctive residue of invention as a result of culture contact and exchange. At the
frontiers of the Chinese and Xiongnu Empires, they had become practicable signs of inter and
intra community differentiation.
Kenneth Lymer, Wessex Archaeology Ltd, Salisbury, UK (k.lymer@wessexarch.co.uk)
Animals Entangled in Art: The Lives of Zoomorphic Imagery in Central Asia during the 1st
Millennium BCE
The art of early nomadic archaeological cultures that roamed the steppes of Eurasia
during the 1st millennium BCE is characterised as exhibiting predominantly zoomorphic imagery,
the so-called Scytho-Siberian ‘animal style’. Moreover, it could be said that the concept of the
‘animal style’ was born in Central Asian academic studies. O.M. Dalton in his monograph on the
Oxus Treasure (1905) found objects recovered from what is known today as Tajikistan had a
style similar to known Scythian objects recovered from the regions around the Black Sea.
Furthermore, Dalton found this ‘Scythic art’ was also based upon animal decorative forms and
held a uniform canon of taste that was an unmistakable characteristic of the cultures ranging
from the Yenisei river to the Carpathians. The actual coining of the ‘animal style’, however,
8

came to the fore after M.I. Rostovtseff’s seminal English publication on the Iranians and Greeks
in South Russia in 1922. Nevertheless, these traditional concepts of art history from the
beginning of the 20th century forged an Orientalist ideal of animal art and early nomads that still
continues to be drawn upon to the present day.
When we place these zoomorphic artefacts on display in a museum they become isolated
and disparate objects intermixed with varying items from other cultures in time and space. Set on
a neutral background under focused light in the display case their exoticness becomes the focus
of attention. There is no doubt to our eyes that many of these animal decorations are beautiful to
look at; however, appreciating their visual aesthetics is only one aspect in the greater range of
sensory experiences connected to objects. Moreover, this was not how the art was originally
intended to be perceived as the gallery is a contrived effect far removed from the actual living
context of the animal imagery. As ethnographic studies have pointed out time and time again, the
reality of material culture exists within the lives of their owners and users. Thus, Scytho-Siberian
zoomorphic decorations were not solely objects of art but were intimately entangled in the daily
lives of people within past societies.
This entanglement is examined through a selection of case studies that focus upon
different aspects of the lives of animal decorations and zoomorphic imagery. Within the early
nomadic archaeological cultures of Kazakhstan, the Altai Republic and Tuva the animal images
were intimately related to how individuals created and asserted their own identities through their
choices of decoration on and off their bodies, as well as the bodies of their horses. Moreover, the
zoomorphics and their applications to various media embodied ‘ways of sensing’ by different
societies. In particular, so-called ‘animal style’ iconography carved in the natural rock at
petroglyph sites was part and parcel of sensual experiences of places and spaces in the landscape.
Overall, animal decorated objects were not artefacts that operated autonomous to society
but co-existed in dynamic relationships with individuals in their communities; the lives of the
zoomorphic ornamentations were intimately entangled within people’s lives. Thus, it is by the
closer scrutiny of their contextual complexity, as well as exploring their sensuous aspects, which
enable us to explore fresher understandings about animal art in past societies in Central Asia
during the first millennium BCE.
Sergey Miniaev, Institute of the History of Material Culture, Russian Academy of Sciences, St.
Petersburg (ssmin@yandex.ru)
Ordos Style Bronzes in Russia: New Discoveries
In recent years during scientific digs in Xiongnu archaeological sites in Russia a lot
bronzes of “Ordos style” were found. The great value of the collection is that the objects were
found in undisturbed tombs. Now we can know the disposition of all finds in the tombs and the
function of every find. The majority of the “Ordos bronzes” were found on women’s and men’s
belts. The sizes and quantity of details on the belts depended on the sex, age and social position
of the owner.
Thanks to new finds we can present different versions of Xiongnu belt sets, from the
simplest belt to the most complicated. The most complicated belt consisted of the central part
(two bronze plaques as a rule; many plaques had a special wood lining) and diverse other details
- small plaques, open-work rings, small rings, fastenings, buttons, buckles etc. Besides, the belt
frequently was decorated with different beads and buckles made from minerals. All bronze
plaques have scenes in “Ordos style”: a skirmish between two horses, a beast of prey catching a
9

herbivore, fantastic scenes (a struggle between two dragons for example). ). Simpler belts
consisted of small bronze plaques and beads. The details of the simplest belt were constructed
from one or two iron buckles only.
The collection considerably supplements a presentation about Xiongnu art: an image of a
he-goat on a seal; a plaque depicting a skirmishing between two dragons; other plaques and
plates are unique.
Aleksandr Naymark, Department of Fine Arts, Art History and Comparative Arts and Culture,
Hofstra University (Aleksandr.Naymark@hofstra.edu)
(Abstract unavailable)
Yihong Pan, Department of History, Miami University (pany@muohio.edu)
Locating Advantages: The Survival of the Tuyuhun 吐谷渾 State on the Edge (300-580s)
From the early fourth century, the proto-Mongolian-speaking Särbi (Xianbei 鮮卑 in
Chinese) and four other semi-nomadic peoples—the Xiongnu 匈奴, Jie 羯, Di 氐, and Qiang 羌
—established a series of states in north and northwest China. One of these states was Tuyughghun,
or Tuyuhun in Chinese, which was established by a branch of the Murong 慕容 Särbi and
located in present Qinghai 青海. While most other states lasted no more than a couple of
generations and the Dai 代 state of the Tabgatch (Ch. Tuoba 拓跋) Särbi went on to establish the
Northern Wei 魏 dynasty (386-534), Tuyuhun was successful in transforming itself from a clanbased
polity into a dynastic power that survived into the Sui 隋 dynasty (581-617). Although
severely defeated by the Sui in 609, it recovered its territory with the collapse of the Sui and rose
as a considerable power in the early Tang period (618-907), only to be conquered by the newly
risen Tibetan empire in 663. Its history lasted for 350 years.
Exploring why Tuyuhun was able to keep its ethnic and political identity for so long, this
article asserts that Tuyuhun’s geographical location and ecological conditions on the
northeastern Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau placed it in a relatively advantageous position. It enabled
the Tuyuhun to develop a mixed economy of herding, farming, handicraft, and trade. It provided
the space the Tuyuhun needed to evolve into an aristocratic, semi-nomadic power that ruled over
a variety of ethnic peoples. It situated Tuyuhun on the edge of the core regions that were in
competition with one another during the Period of Division: north China, south China, the Hexi
corridor, the Mongolian steppes, and the Western Regions. Their distance from these powers
protected the Tuyuhun from destruction or incorporation, enabling their self-preservation,
providing the Tuyuhun with space to retreat to and to expand and to exercise a multilateral form
of diplomacy. Furthermore, Tuyuhun’s control over the Qinghai road, a branch of the Silk Road
south of the Hexi corridor route, raised its status as a crucial intermediary for trade and regional
diplomacy during the Period of Division (220-589) when the Hexi corridor route suffered from
political instability.
However, the Qinghai location in the end worked against the Tuyuhun when China and
Tibet each became a unified power, and Tuyuhun was caught between them, leading to its land
annexed by the Tibetan empire.
In his study of the relationship between Inner Asia and China, Thomas Barfield has
identified four key ecological and cultural areas: Mongolia, north China, Manchuria, and
Turkestan. His paradigm leaves out Tuyuhun and Tibet. The article shows that states such as
Tuyuhun were important players in the political history of China and Inner Asia and had ripple
10

effects upon the geopolitics of the time. It is not an accident that the Tuyuhun land fell into the
rising Tibetan empire from the 630s. Therefore, Tuyuhun and Tibet could be added to Barfield’s
analysis as another key ecological and cultural area that played an important role from the early
seventh centuries onwards in China’s frontier relations with Inner Asia.
Daniel Prior, Department of History, Miami University (priordg@muohio.edu)
Integral or Incidental? Indo-European Mythic Fragments in Inner Asia
In this paper I trace and seek to explain a number of thematic parallels between a midnineteenth
century oral epic poem of the Kirghiz, entitled Joloy Qan, and two seemingly
unrelated symbolic phenomena: a Hsiung-nu–era Siberian figurative bronze belt buckle plaque
from the Arthur M. Sackler Collections, and a diverse set of mythic themes from a broad range
of ancient Indo-European traditions. Judging the soundness of these correspondences is a matter
of methodological and theoretical interest, as they involve ethnolinguistic diversities and spans
of time and space on scales that push the bounds of plausible reconstruction. The movements of
peoples and ideas suggested by these correspondences conform to some models of Inner Asian
prehistory while challenging others.
The three items under comparison display “exquisite correspondences,” thematic
parallels the number and narrative precision of which would seem to demand some kind of
explanation besides pure chance. A hero/god figure who is guilty of kin killing, breach of oath,
and sexual transgressions, goes berserk and kills his own warriors, and decapitates an enemy; his
sister has a sexual liaison with an enemy, and is dragged to death by horses; a young hero/god
(the aforementioned one or his son) is born of the waters, has nine joint parents who are siblings,
has sword- and sheep/goat-associations, and lacks a wife: these themes are found in Joloy Qan
and in dispersed remnant form in Norse (Germanic), Roman (Italic), Vedic (Indo-Aryan),
Ossetic (Iranian), and Nuristani (Dardic/Indo-Iranian) traditions. The young hero/god, who has a
relationship with a hawk–spirit-maiden, transports his elders in a cart to a land of everlasting
happiness: these themes are found in Joloy Qan and the Hsiung-nu belt buckle.
Although the composition of the recent Kirghiz epic Joloy Qan is a process about which
very little is known, it seems that some elements of the story preserve very ancient narrative
complexes that have elsewhere been scattered almost beyond recognition.
Leland Rogers, Department of Anthropology, Indiana University (lelroger@indiana.edu)
Ancient DNA from the Elite Xiongnu at Ögiinuur Sum, Arkhangai, Mongolia
It has been fairly well established that the Bronze Age inhabitants of the Hangai
mountain range in Mongolia were predominantly “Europoid”; the Xiongnu population shows a
substantial mixing. Nine Xiongnu period ancient bone samples from Elite Xiongnu period
burials at Ögiinuur Sum, Arkhangai, have had preliminary testing of the HVS 1 region of their
mitochondrial DNA. Seven of the samples have produced some results. While all the results
must be confirmed, results suggest a higher proportion of “Europoid” markers than expected.
The region of study was chosen due to its relative proximity to the ancient Mongol and Uyghur
capitals, along with its relative proximity to known burials of the Xiongnu imperial house. This
is a work in progress of 44 Xiongnu period samples from the southeast Hangai range granted by
the National University of Mongolia.
11

Edward Vajda, Department of Modern and Classical Languages, Western Washington
University (Edward.Vajda@wwu.edu)
Between Forest and Steppe: Language and Ethnicity in Early Inner Asia
The linguistic identity of the earliest pastoral nomads to arise in eastern Eurasia – the
Xiongnu and Huns – remains unresolved, and even the origins of the later Turks and Mongols
cannot fully be understood by studying the steppes alone. This presentation considers the Kets
and their extinct relatives – the Yugh, Arin, Assan, Kott and Pumpokol – forest tribes living
north of the steppe zone in the taiga forest of central Siberia. These peoples spoke languages
belonging to the Yeniseian family, which today is represented by only a few elderly speakers of
the northernmost Ket dialects. Most studies of ancient steppe history do not focus attention on
the Yeniseians, who were Siberia’s last hunter-gatherers and never developed, in constrast to the
bettern known steppe pastoralists, large polities or empires beyond their immediate areas of
habitation. Present-day Turkic and Mongolian territory in or near South Siberia, however,
contain numerous substrate river names of Yeniseian origin, suggesting that ancient geographic
contact between taiga hunters and peoples who later expanded through pastoralism were once
quite extensive.
This presentation discusses the Yeniseian family of languages by describing what is
known about its former geographic spread and internal dialectal division. Alongside the expected
Turkic loanwords into Yeniseian involving metallurgy or pastoral products, other, presumably
earlier lexical parallels are considered. Ancient Turkic shares with Yeniseian a range of words
connected with forest life that can best be explained as Yeniseian substrate loanwords that
entered Turkic before the rise of the First Turk Kaganate in the 6 th century AD. These words
reflect a specific Yeniseian dialect (the Ket-Arin branch of the family) and some of them show
internal structure unique to Yeniseian, so they could not have been borrowed into Yeniseian
from Turkic. This linguistic evidence parallels other facts from substrate river names and human
genetics to suggest that a component of early Turkic ethnogenesis derives from Yeniseianspeaking
forest tribes, though this fact became obscured by the subsequent disappearance of
Yeniseian languages from South Siberia and the adoption of Turkic pastoral loanwords into the
Yeniseian dialects that survived farther north in the taiga.
Also discussed are parallels between the Pumpokol branch of Yeniseian and the ancient
Xiongnu. The scholar Alexander Vovin (2002) already suggested a Yeniseian origin for certain
Xiongnu words. Pumpokol river names in northern Mongolian territory are examined in this
connection. Although the surviving Xiongnu linguistic material is probably too sparse to support
firm conclusions about ethnic and linguistic affiliation, the possibility that at least some elements
within the Xiongnu Confederation spoke a Yeniseian dialect of the Pumpokol variety must be
regarded as plausible.
Finally, the presentation considers words common to both Yeniseian and Mongolian
languages that appear to have been borrowed from an early Uralic source. These lexical parallels
suggest that the area south of Lake Baikal representing part of the homeland of the Xiongnu may
have been inhabited in prehistory by people speaking a now extinct branch of Uralic. This
suggests another possible linguistic origins for at least some of the tribes in the Xiongnu
Confederation. A Uralic linguistic affiliation for the core ethnic element among the Xiongnu has
not been considered previously, but comparative study of Yeniseian and Mongolic vocabulary
appears to provide at least circumstantial evidence of such a possibility.
12

Robert S. Wicks, Miami University Art Museum and Department of Art (wicksrs@muohio.edu)
Bird-Headed Antler Tines: Stability and Change in Ancient Eurasian Art"
Although the original meanings ascribed to the bird-headed antler tine motif remain
incompletely understood today, the transmission of such a distinctive visual sign over some
4,000 miles of sparsely inhabited grasslands among non-literate populations together with its
survival for a period of more than four centuries underscore the vitality and innate power of its
symbolism. As an art historian I am particularly interested in determining the typological
groupings of the material in order to gain a better understanding of the motif’s possible origins,
thematic development, and, ultimately, meanings. This paper was inspired by the work of
Professor Esther Jacobson and is given in her honor.
My presentation begins with an examination of the major morphological characteristics
of the bird-headed antler tine motif and its geographical and temporal horizons within the visual
art traditions of Eurasia during the second half of the first millennium B.C.E. Doubtless inspired
by large birds of prey, such as the eagle with its hook-like beak, the bird-headed antler tine motif
displays considerable regional variation. In Scythian art, for example, the cere, the waxy area
around the opening of the nostrils, takes on the appearance of a duck's bill accompanied by a
dramatic coiling of the upper beak. In its easternmost development, among the Xiongnu and
Eastern Han, the bird acquires, in addition to leaf-like ears, a shovel-shaped beak structure
similar to that of a flamingo.
The main part of my presentation introduces an analytical strategy for examining the
typological development of the bird-headed antler tine motif in isolated and narrative
representations utilizing Esther Jacobson’s predation/transformation terminology for Scytho-
Siberian art. While these observations and groupings do not necessarily explain the meaning
behind a particular element or motif, they are valuable for pointing out unexpected patterns and
relationships.
13