NorthernWei(386–534):ANewFormofEmpireinEastAsia Scott Pearce
Xiongnu:TheWorld’sFirstNomadicEmpire Bryan K. Miller
Xiongnu
The World’s First Nomadic Empire
Bryan K. Miller
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DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190083694.001.0001
ForAlicia,ofcourse.
Acknowledgments
Prologue
Nomad Protagonists
The Nomadic Alternative
The Mobile State
Reconfiguring the Narrative
Kingdoms of Those Who Draw the Bow
A Matrix of Steppe Worlds
Nomads of the Steppe Heartland
Herders of the Corridors and Oases
Herders and Hunters of the Far North
Kingdom of the High Mountains
Herders Between the Steppe and the Sown
Inner Asian Innovations
Masters of the Steppe
The New Order
Noble Nomads
Under Xiongnu Reins
All Are Xiongnu
Foddering the Regime
Livestock and Labor
Crops and Ores
4
5 6
Furs and Silks
The Spoils of Conquest
Rule by the Horse
Institutions of the Empire
Regulations and Accounts
Ceremonies and Customs
Beastly Badges
Body of the Empire
Local Communities
Regional Hierarchies
Supraregional Polity
Arms of the Empire
Ventures Left and Right
Enterprises of Interregional Exploitation
Harnessing Eurasia
Of Wolves and Sheep
Empires in Arms
The Militant Emperor
The Great Game
Five Baits for the Nomads
Other Kings and Other Kingdoms
Culling the Herds
The Five Chanyus
Masters of the Continental Worlds
On the Global Stage
Great Reformations
Reigning Supreme
Global Political Culture
Communities of the Empire
Local Nodes
Regional Networks
The Western Frontier
The Imperial Matrix
The Resilient Regime
The Scattering of Sheep
Hunnic Heritage
After the Fall
What’s in a Name
A Whole New World
Pacifying the Barbarians
Epilogue
Appendix (Chanyu Rulers)
Notes
References
Index (with Chinese Characters)
Acknowledgments
An eminent Xiongnu scholar once stated for their book acknowledgments: “I thought that this page would never be written.” And they have asked me for many years now: When will your book be written? I tally up the years and places and people that led to the completion of my book, and it is a long course indeed, achieved only through the help and encouragement of a horde of friends, colleagues, and mentors.
The interdisciplinary historical-archaeological approaches that underlie this book began, without a doubt, during my graduate studies at the Institute of Archaeology at UCLA. While there, I was privileged to begin my intellectual journeys under the incomparable guidance of Lothar von Falkenhausen. He was a remarkable mentor and has been an unceasing supporter in the decades since. My fellow East Asian archaeology colleagues from my time at UCLA— Gwen Bennett, Chen Pochan, Rowan Flad, Minna (Haapenen) Franck, Lai Guolong, and Ye Wa—were equally important in the formations of my endeavors into early empires, which shifted quickly from Qin to Han and, finally, to Xiongnu. And last, I must thank Steve Rosen, with whom I was most fortunate to overlap at UCLA, for formally launching me into the realms of “nomads” archaeology.
My first colleagues with whom I ventured into Mongolian archaeology—namely Tserendorj Odbaatar and Jean-Luc Houle— continue to help in more ways than they know, both in and out of the field, from Khanuy brigade to center city Philadelphia, from institutional juggling to theorizing prehistoric mobile pastoral communities. I must give profuse thanks to Diimaajav Erdenebaatar and Natsag Batbold for facilitating incredible first forays into the world of Xiongnu archaeology at the amazing site of Gol Mod II. I am most indebted to Tsagaan Törbat, an all-knowing bagsh for
Xiongnu archaeology, without whom much of this book would be severely lacking and with whom I have shared many office discussions, from Mongolia to Germany. He continues to impart rare books and wisdom that have vastly improved this book, even up to the very eve before I sat down to compose these acknowledgments. Last, and perhaps more than anyone else in Mongolia, I must thank Jamsranjav Bayarsaikhan (Bayaraa)—my long-time field collaborator, intellectual colleague, naizmin’co-conspirator, and true nökhör—the most steadfast and inspiring companion imaginable.
Through Bayarsaikhan and Odbaatar, I gained an extremely supportive base of operations at the National Museum of Mongolia, working with a host of office mates and fieldwork mates, including Tseel Ayush and Tsevendorj Egiimaa. It was my great privilege to work for several years in Khovd alongside the National Museum crew, with added help from James Williams, Judy Logan, Claire Neily, and Erik Johannesson, and even the esteemed Prokopy B. Konovalov, who blessed us with his immense experience and wisdom (and joy) for two summers of excavation work. Of the many students from Khovd University who joined our crew, I give special thanks to Tsegmediin Mönkhbat, who I am now honored to call a long-distance colleague and co-author. For all these field endeavors that produced amazing data for this book, I must express the utmost gratitude to the Silk Road Foundation and its undaunted academic leader Daniel Waugh, for overwhelming faith in and financial support for such a young scholar-in-the-works.
All the while I conducted fieldwork in Mongolia, I was able to “keep a foot” in China through my gracious hosts at the Center for Frontier Archaeology at Jilin University, Yang Jianhua, Shao Huiqiu, and, above all, Pan Ling. Thank you as well to Michelle (Machicek) Hrivnyak, Pauline Sebillaud, and Steve Wang—my tongxuemen of overseas grad students there in Changchun, who were great sounding boards of conversation. Yes, xiao-miis at last da-mi.
On top of the foundations of archaeological research from UCLA and the many years of fieldwork in Mongolia, this book benefitted greatly from my years as a doctoral grad student at the University of Pennsylvania, through forays into worlds of Chinese texts
investigations with Paul Goldin and worlds of art history with grad master Nancy Steinhardt. The consortium of fellow grad students, who humored my incessant ramblings and map gymnastics about the Xiongnu, were of equal importance in the collation of the first iteration of a Xiongnu database. So, many thanks to you, Kate Baldanza, Aurelia Campbell, Sarah Laursen, Leslee Michelsen, Jeff Rice, Ori Tavor, and Chris Thornton. Thank you to Holly Pittman and Renata Holod and all those in the Kolb Society at the Penn Museum for providing a most excellent community for engaging my archaeological inquiries.
Above all, I give thanks to two ‘outside’ people during my time at U Penn, my resolute mentors in archaeological and historical examinations who gave such shape to my dissertation on Power Politics in the Xiongnu Empire (which is the origin of this book)— Bryan Hanks and Nicola Di Cosmo. Bryan (the other one) is one of the most faithful and inspiring intellectual supporters one could ever have. Nicola was a devoted mentor long before he even took on that official role during my years at Penn. He excavated (happily, despite the flies) with me in the pits at Gol Mod II and has continued to support me through many years since getting my degree, even to the point of enabling the publication of this book.
Many of those thanked here are individuals, but there must be room as well to acknowledge the support from organizations. The American Center for Mongolian Studies funded my first venture to Khovd (with Erdenebaatar), facilitated the massive undertaking of the Xiongnu Archaeology international conference in 2008, and managed a valuable year of postdoc work in Ulaanbaatar, when I was able to begin the process of transforming a dissertation into a book.
Of the rare kinds of people who change lives, personally and intellectually, I must give special note to Ursula Brosseder, my other co-conspirator in Mongolian archaeology, a most welcome “intense” colleague, and the best kind of friend who opened doors to so many opportunities in Germany and beyond. If I am in debt to the numerous people listed thus for the gathering and processing of data for this book, then I am certainly in debt to Ursula for
assistance in the inspiration, revising, and polishing of many of the ideas.
I promised many times through the long course of the production of this manuscript that I would someday thank Uncle Alex and Aunt Gerda. The Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Germany facilitated a very productive two years at the University of Bonn, where I spent most of the scheming stages for this book and benefitted from the rare books of their Inner Asian archaeology library and invaluable conversations with Jan Bemmann, Ursula Brosseder, and Susanne Reichert. The Gerda Henkel Foundation gave me my first book-writing grant, funding the most valuable resource—time—for final collation of the piles of archaeological and historical data that fill these pages. And during this time given from Gerda Henkel, I was fortunate to gain yet another cohort of archaeological colleagues in the German town of Kiel. Thank you Christian Horn, for entertaining theories of war and society so far from Scandinavia, and thank you Martin Furholt, for bringing your expertise and insights (and humor) all the way to Mongolia.
The chapters of this book began composition at Oxford University, under the auspices of the Nomadic Empires group led by Pekka Hämäläinen. It was an immensely fruitful group with plenty of good pub chats, matched by a stream of “comparative nomads” conversations, on frequent occasions with my reliable office mates Julien Cooper and Marie Favereau. I cannot understate the value of my Oxford archaeology colleagues as well, namely Paul Wordsworth, who showed me the gavel-banging inner spheres; Anke Hein, with whom I shared many whiskey chats (and eventually a conference and volume for Lothar); and Pete Hommel, Eurasian prehistory genius, whom we have now brought with us to Mongolia. Pete, Let’s do this!
I must also give thanks to Uncle Max. The Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, where Niki Boivin created a welcome space for me and gave me the opportunity to make rapid headway in writing this book. There, in the town of Jena, I was privileged to be part of an amazingly collegial environment with far too many people to thank in these acknowledgments. Of the host of brilliant
young scholars there with whom I interacted, I give special thanks to the people who helped shape my conceptions of milk, millet, and populations dynamics that have been folded into this particular narrative of the Xiongnu—Elissa Bullion, Steve Goldstein, Jesse Hendy, Anneke Janzen, Choongwon Jeong, Patrick Roberts, Robert Spengler, Tina Warriner, and Shevan Wilkin. Thanks for your patience with me in the labs, Sam Brown, many praises to Mara Nakama, who created the most amazing illustrations for this book, and thanks as well to Will Taylor for taking care all the renderings of horses were proper.
Last of all, endless gratitude goes to the History of Art Department and Museum of Anthropological Archaeology at the University of Michigan, where Christy Gruber and Mike Galaty helped carve out a fantastic final home for me and where the final bits of writing were done, even amidst pandemic shutdowns. My thanks to Joyce Marcus for reading and commenting upon every last word and punctuation point, and to Bruce Worden who made all the maps look far better than I could have imagined. Thanks as well go to Tammy Bray and Lori Khatchadourian and the amazing School for Advanced Research seminar group on imperial politics they brought together; the group helped add integral, even if last-minute, thoughts and bits to the book.
Acknowledgment statements often end with the greatest foundation—family. I have benefitted for so many years from their immense encouragement and unfathomable support to venture out to China, Taiwan, Mongolia, Germany, and England and to persevere the tumultuous worlds of academia. But how does one go about thanking a partner, especially one of the incomparable caliber of Alicia Ventresca Miller? Not just a partner with whom you share a life (and a child, who is subjected to images of belts and bows and taken on long journeys into the Mongolian countryside), but someone who helps advance and inspire you through brainstorming, manuscript drafts, and research trips. Any portion of this book which reads more easily is most certainly a result of her input. Any success is owed profoundly to her contributions. So to her, this book is dedicated.
Prologue
The Chanyu, Magnificent Ruler of the vast steppe realms and master of All Those Who Draw the Bow, ascended a high mountain with his entire entourage and all the trappings for a traditional steppe ritual of a binding blood oath. He had chosen the particular frontier peak, beyond the confines of any Chinese garrisons, to convene with Chinese ministers and consecrate a new peace treaty. The oath ritual boldly commenced with the sacrifice of a white horse to sanctify the ceremony. Then the Chanyu took a ritual knife, shaved off bits of gold into a cup of alcohol, and stirred them in with a ceremonial spoon. He presented the gilded brew to the Chinese ministers in an aged cup fashioned from a human skull. It was an heirloom of the Xiongnu rulers, handed down from a previous conquering Chanyu over a century and a half before, hewn from the head of an enemy king who had once wronged the founder of the steppe empire.
The Chinese delegation had come to the gathering with predications of renewed nomadic concession to the Chinese court. But there, amongst a mass of nomadic administrators and warriors at the culmination of a steppe ceremony, the handful of Chinese officials drank from the ominous memento of Xiongnu power. The outcome of the gathering was not going to accord with the ambitions of the August Emperor who sat far way in Chang’an, the capital of the Han Empire. It was the design of this Chanyu, named Huhanye, one who would revitalize the might of the steppe empire.
After decades of war with the Han Empire, and amidst fragmenting civil war in the steppe realms, Huhanye Chanyu had gone south to entreat the Chinese for aid and reside within their frontier. In 51 BCE he had capitulated to the Han Emperor and was heralded a “frontier vassal.” To this end, the Emperor had bestowed him with official Han garments and a residence within the Han
capital region. The menace of the Xiongnu Empire had at long last been quelled and its ruler, the Chanyu, ostensibly restrained within the Han realms.
This would certainly have seemed so to any of the Chinese court chroniclers at the time, and generations of historians since have interpreted this as the beginning of a tumultuous and protracted dissolution of the Xiongnu Empire. But the course of ensuing events, culminating in the mountaintop oath ceremony, demonstrate a dramatically different narrative.
Soon after his apparent acquiescence in the confines of the Han capital, Huhanye moved northward with his remnant entourage to reside in the grasslands between Chinese frontier garrisons. Yet these lands were also occupied by resettled nomadic hordes, those who had previously served the Xiongnu rulers. Although ostensibly within the limits of the Han Empire, the Chanyu was surrounded by fellow noble nomads and militia of the steppe, of whom he quickly took command based in his temporary mountain abode. On numerous occasions he received tens of thousands of cavalry for protection and, through claims that his people were weary, cart loads of grain from the stores of the surrounding frontier counties. Only once more during his time in the frontier did he go directly to the Han court to pay his respects.
As Huhanye bolstered his hordes and augmented his resources, nomadic groups in the frontier who had once submitted to the Han began to withdraw northward in ever-increasing numbers into the steppes. By 47 BCE, Chinese officials at the northern frontier remarked that the Chanyu’s people were in fact flourishing, his main rival within the steppes was no longer a threat, and his own ministers had begun to discuss a return north to the core Xiongnu lands. In order to promptly garner a favorable and binding truce before the Chanyu was out of reach, Chinese officials in the frontier met with Huhanye at the top of a mountain to forge a treaty in the name of their Emperor.
The terms of this treaty were not one of Xiongnu submission, as the Chinese had presumed, but rather a peace agreement between equal powers, recognizing “Han and Xiongnu together as one
house.” Even though court histories handed down through the ages assert that the treaty was devised by Han representatives, the emissaries were clearly not in control of its particulars. Even more telling than the terms of the treaty were the rites of the oath ceremony. It was conducted not in Chinese fashion but in accord with sacred spaces, accoutrements, and actions of steppe rituals that imparted Xiongnu dominance over the agreement.
[The Han officials] Chang and Meng along with the Chanyu and [his] great ministers all ascended the mountain east of [what would become known as the] River of Xiongnu Assent. [There] a white horse was slaughtered, the Chanyu used a jinglu knife [to carve off] gold and a liuli spoon to mix together [with] alcohol, and then, using the drinking vessel which Old Venerate Chanyu had made from the skull of the King of the defeated Yuezhi, all [in attendance] drank to the blood covenant.1
The ritual paraphernalia were items particular to steppe traditions. The knife used to shave off gold into the alcohol was a specific sort of Xiongnu precious dagger, and its name (jinglu) referred to a Xiongnu deity of Heaven and the sacrificial places in honor of its spirit. The cup was an heirloom of Xiongnu royal regalia, commemorating a triumphant campaign against one of the last competing nomadic groups, the Yuezhi, well over a century earlier under the reign of the second imperial Chanyu. In addition, the sacrifice of prized horses for ritual ceremonies had been a custom among steppe nomads for well over a millennium, and the open ritual space atop sacred mountains was certainly akin to steppe ceremonies linked with sacred geography.
The frontier encampment of the Chanyu was closer to the Han capital than to the seat of Xiongnu power in grasslands north of the Gobi Desert, yet Huhanye purposefully did not journey to Chang’an to consecrate this oath directly with the Han Emperor. The new treaty was conducted according to steppe ritual conventions and, most importantly, with terms conducive to the Chanyu’s ambitions to assert himself as sovereign over all communities of “those who draw the bow” in the steppe and as hegemon over the various lords of Eurasia.
Soon after the oath ceremony, the Chanyu returned northward as planned to the core steppe regions of the Xiongnu Empire. Very little is recorded of his subsequent actions, yet nomadic groups who had previously submitted to the Han continued to withdraw from the frontier. Even some high-level Chinese emissaries, once they made the diplomatic journey to the Xiongnu court deep within the steppe, did not return. Not until sixteen years later, in 31 BCE when a new Chinese Emperor had taken the throne and the last of the Chanyu’s competitors within the Inner Asian steppes had been vanquished— did Huhanye come confidently to the court of the Han Emperor to be showered with lavish gifts and renew the peace treaty of his devise. Even with the Chanyu in attendance at the court at Chang’an, the Emperor could not undo the pact that bestowed such favor and authority upon the steppe ruler.
It was upon this occasion that the Xiongnu ruler was also given a Chinese bride to take as one of his secondary wives. Despite not being a truly royal bride from the immediate Han ruling family, she played a long-standing and significant role in accounts of Han–Xiongnu politics. She was Lady Wang, the Bride Who Pacified the Barbarians, and her tale has perpetuated the notion that steppe nomads and their regimes can be undone once proponents of Chinese culture infiltrate their society. It was through such historical figures turned fictionalized legends that notions of Xiongnu pacification lived on in historical memory.
Although the people and events surrounding the Chanyu Huhanye have been associated with the deterioration of the Xiongnu Empire, details embedded within the corpuses of historical records and archaeological remains belie such a narrative. The texts that have been used to spin the long-standing narrative of Chinese supremacy need only be unraveled and rewoven with the growing body of material evidence into a narrative that gives proper voice to the protagonists of the Xiongnu story.
Chapter 1 NomadProtagonists
To embark on the long and complex story of the Xiongnu, I present a single inconspicuous artifact—a sheep anklebone. Rather than any of the countless possible treasures pedestaled by museum exhibitions or printed boldly in art collection catalogues, of the sort that fill MacGregor’s HistoryoftheWorldin100Objects, I choose something that at first seems base but in actuality has significant implications for an intricate understanding of Xiongnu culture, society, and empire (Figure 1.1).
Figure 1.1 Composite symbol (marking emphasized) on sheep anklebone from Gol Mod II cemetery.
After Miller et al. 2006.
Over twenty years ago, the first Xiongnu individual I ever investigated was a young child from a small grave. Within the relatively meager burial were the partial remains of a foal and a few lambs offered in remembrance of the youth, one who was dressed with simple iron belt fittings and accompanied by a pile of worn sheep bones probably used in some form of pastime. Although this grave lay on the eastern flank of the largest known tomb of the nomadic empire—a monumental and ostentatious burial that has in more recent years yielded fantastic treasures of jade, silver, gold, and exotic glass—the bones with markings in the small grave of the youth remain uppermost in my thoughts about the nomadic empire.
The surface of this particular sheep anklebone is smooth from repeated handling. Animal astragali, called shagai in modern Mongolian, are found in ancient and medieval contexts throughout Eurasia, and are still used today as gaming pieces and for fortunetelling in steppe cultures. The widespread use of these objects reflects a large suite of similar cultural traditions, albeit with local variations, that span the vast territories of the Eurasian steppes. Here, however, I focus more on the implications this object has on the inner workings of the first steppe empire.
In Xiongnu culture, ankle bones of sheep and other herd animals served as personal adornments (bones with bored holes at the corner to hang from bags and belts), as portable tools such as fire-starters (bones with drilled burning indentations), or as playing pieces of indeterminate function (worn bones, sometimes with markings). The multiple uses of these livestock bones as personal possessions convey the primacy of a pastoral way of life and echo perhaps the multiple resources, from milk and meat to hair and hides, that livestock provided for communities throughout the empire. But it is the etchings on anklebones that speak to the economic and political institutions. Considerations of these markings, via additional iterations and material contexts of an extensive vocabulary of equivalent symbols, generate questions about production, exchange, administration, prestige, and authority in the Xiongnu Empire.
Markings of geometric design, often referred to as tamgas, have long been prevalent throughout Eurasia but appear first among steppe groups in the era when the Xiongnu Empire emerged. The Xiongnu utilized these markings in multiple milieu—on the undersides of wheel-made cook pots and storage jars, on bone handles of their composite bows, etched onto imported luxury vessels, stamped onto the eave tiles of their royal buildings, and carved on rock outcrops throughout their realms.
Ancient art and modern tools alike demonstrate that these have also been used as brands for livestock, and their presence in a variety of material contexts of the Xiongnu may indicate similar practices of denoting ownership. Many Xiongnu period signs have accordingly
been equated to clan or lineage emblems, though there are only a handful of them with slight variations of the core elements.
Does this suggest that only certain groups retained clan signs or were prevalent enough to be preserved in the archaeological record? Furthermore, if each sign represents a single lineage group, then what are the implications of composite signs, such as on the anklebone from the child’s grave, for group interactions like clan cooperatives or lineage alliances? Regardless of the exact meanings of these signs or the possible groups being designated, they intimate a scheme of articulating ownership—of storage pots and the contents within, of prestigious exotica used in social performances of power, of restricted arenas for ceremonies and monumental expressions of authority, and of pivotal peaks and valleys for moving through and utilizing the vast steppe landscape.
The repetitive use of many individual signs in different contexts demonstrates a pervasive and codified scheme of symbols. These symbols appear to have been integral in economic and political endeavors.1 As many signs closely resemble runic marks of the Türkic inscriptions centuries later, these could embody early iterations in record keeping that were later utilized in the development of a writing system among medieval steppe nomads.2
Historical tradition has long held that the Xiongnu had no form of writing, citing Han court accounts that state they “are without written documents and use spoken words for agreements and bonds.”3 Yet other passages in the same chronicle betray the supposition that these nomads were lacking any means of keeping accounts. “In autumn [when] the horses are fat [they] hold a great gathering at Dai Forest and examine and check the calculations of people and livestock.”4 Was there perhaps a (as of yet unknown) complex system of record keeping or ownership marking that is hinted at by this written mention and by these recurring symbols?
Steppe societies in the centuries immediately after the Xiongnu era are described as making marks on wood to keep records or tallying sheep dung to calculate numbers of troops.5 Even in the Inca Empire of South America, long series of knotted cotton or wool cords called
quipu were used for accounts of llamas, alpacas, chili peppers, and other goods, demonstrating highly developed systems for managing resources in the absence of formal writing.6 When considering such alternatives to written characters for record keeping, the archaeological artifacts and historical mentions for the Xiongnu era signal alternative yet efficient methods of accounting among the steppe communities.
Some markings on anklebones, including those found in the small child’s grave, exhibit a series of hatches that could relate to a numbering system. If so, then such marks could well be a vestige of enumeration for which all other material renderings have not been preserved. The histories seemingly credit any writing capabilities among the Xiongnu to counseling from Han advisors, stating that one defected minister instructed “the [Xiongnu] Left and Right [lords] [how] to [prepare] documents and [keep] accounts so as to calculate and record their multitudes of people and components of livestock.”7 However, the form and style of most Xiongnu markings are radically different from Chinese characters. Even the recently discovered Hanstyle bronze seal from a Xiongnu grave in Mongolia bears an especially non-Chinese form of writing cast into the marking underside.8 Despite the possible incorporation of some techniques of accounting coming from the Han realms, these most likely reflect a particularly steppe-derived system that developed during the Xiongnu era.
While these markings may not constitute a writing system that renders the spoken language(s) of Xiongnu constituents, they were certainly charged with meaning and utilized in a structured fashion for materials and places. Such etched and carved schemes for accounting and ownership require us to alter our understanding of how resources—whether in livestock, land, prestigious products or even people—were controlled in the steppe and to expand our notions of the kinds of social and economic institutions that could facilitate the maintenance of a large empire. Rather than drawing up Procrustean checklists of “empire” restricted by criteria such as fullfledged writing systems—or, for that matter, much of the assumed hard infrastructure like roads and market cities or soft infrastructure
like law codes and bureaucracy—we should consider a plethora of possibilities for the social, economic, and political institutions employed to manage resources and control communities on the level of empires.
Reconsiderations of large nomadic conglomerates in many regions of the world have begun to challenge the ways we think of formal political entities, nomadic or otherwise. Even traditionally demoted indigenous groups of the North American Plains are now discussed as peer empires alongside the Spanish, French, and American regimes. In these particular cases, the Great Plains entities are noted as imperialistic in their outward actions, from their conquests to their commercial networks that penetrated, exploited, and pushed back against the colonial European empires.9 Yet they are not deemed completely imperial from within, in so far as they lacked a king or emperor who retained centralized authority over a hierarchy of ranks, and they did not have clear territorial delineations.10
Historians and archaeologists have increasingly emphasized interior dynamics, relying upon the available textual and growing material records, respectively, in their analyses of governing systems and constituent communities of early empires.11 Although most scholars deem the Xiongnu entity to have been imperial in its outward military and economic engagements, characterizations of its interior constitution span a broad spectrum from tribal confederacy to nomadic empire.12 Terms that seem contradictory are combined in attempts to describe an entity that does not conform to traditional classifications, including labels of “stateless empire” and “supercomplex chiefdom” employed by Nikolai Kradin.13
In response to struggles against constricting categorizations, William Honeychurch and others have furthered the possibilities of understanding by showing how pastoral nomadism and statehood are, despite conventional narratives, not in conflict.14 This growing body of scholarship concurs that the Xiongnu entity did possess institutions of cohesive political organization and centralized authority that were imperial in nature and set it apart from other nomadic entities.15
Nevertheless, summaries of world history continue to deem the steppe and its societies as incongruous to any discussion of empire. Even the large two-volume OxfordWorldHistoryofEmpire, omits the historically and archaeologically attested Xiongnu and Türk empires, leaving the Mongols to seem like a political enigma that emerged surprisingly on the global stage.16 This may be, in part, due to the many failed attempts to fit nomadic regimes into the predetermined boxes of empire as necessarily bureaucratic and agrarian. As these academic perceptions persist, we are left with the relentless base assumption that nomads cannot formulate empires. But any investigation of pre-modern polities should dwell less on their categorization and more on their actions and operations.17
The Xiongnu may not have formulated an entrenched bureaucracy of the sort for which the Persian, Chinese, and Mediterranean empires are famous, but they did develop a complex political system that fostered cohesion and centralized control. They may not have established a polity with materially manifested borders or allencompassing domains, but they were firmly territorial and persistent in their campaigns of dominance and resource extraction.
With archaeological and historical brushes in concert, this book illustrates how nomads constructed a cohesive supraregional and politically centralized regime that successfully managed a massive and diverse surplus of resources for the benefit of a few—in other words, an empire. The Xiongnu were imperial not only in their outward actions but also in their interior operations. Politics were hierarchical and pervasive, linking together communities of neighboring and disparate regions of Inner Asia into a centrally controlled regime mobilized for military and economic action.
The institutions for accounting invoked by the marked sheep bone (with which I began this introductory discussion) call into question entrenched assumptions about steppe pastoral peoples and their capacity for social and economic complexity. Yet tamgas and other markings highlight only one of the many new institutions of political authority and wealth management of the Xiongnu, beyond mere military might, that enabled the nomadic empire to have such deep historical impact throughout Eurasia.
THE NOMADIC ALTERNATIVE
Academic scholarship and popular literature alike continue to marginalize nomadic societies. Nomads occupy worlds seemingly outside of civilization and embrace alternative lifeways deemed at odds with economic and political advancement.18 Their reliance on livestock herds is reckoned incapable of the kinds of growth and stability associated with large political regimes, and their mobile lifeways, with communities purportedly able to “vote with their feet,” are deemed a source of social fission antithetical to cohesive governance.19
Yet nomadic societies comprise flexible social units and easily conveyable wealth, both ideal for efficient large-scale operations. Their pastoral engagements constitute resilient, not fragile, strategies of long-term maintenance.20 Hence, nomadism is not a hindrance to the creation of durable compositions, but rather presents so-called alternative and equally viable trajectories for the development of an extensive polity.21
Untangling nomadic traditions from their accumulated adverse connotations requires first a recognition that the label “nomad” has been a more cumbersome term than it should be.22 For societies of the Eurasian steppes, this has led to the conflation of vast regions and varied peoples into a single monolithic entity, in both cultural and economic terms.23 But upon parsing nomadism, we find a range of endeavors engaging a variety of livestock that may include permanent villages and agriculture just as well as ephemeral campsites and long-distance migrations.24
Despite prevailing connotations, the linguistic root of the word “nomad” does not directly denote community movement so much as the pasturing of animals, whether or not that task of pasturing required shifts in residence.25 The frequently interchanged terms of “nomadic pastoralism” and “pastoral nomadism” attempt to distinguish between the variables of residential mobility and pastoral economy enveloped by the label of nomadism. However, more and more scholarship on so-called nomads has chosen to speak of
“mobile pastoralists” of many different sorts, whose lifeways lie variably along intersecting spectrums of habitation (settled-to-mobile) and subsistence (agricultural-to-pastoral).26
Pastoralists often diversify their herds in order to provide a plurality of pathways to stable economies.27 But most societies that are primarily pastoral are not exclusively so. The raising, pasturing, moving, and harvesting of herds of domesticated animals do not preclude engagements in hunting, gathering, or even farming (i.e., the raising and harvesting of domesticated crops). Hence, many socalled nomads engage in pastorally based yet multiresource economies.28
Similarly, not all steppe pastoralists continually moved great distances. In Mongolia, the scales of mobility and patterns of land use, as well as the compositions of local herds, have greatly varied between regions.29 Instead of a constant engagement with longdistance movements, what has characterized most of the steppe pastoralists of Inner Asia is an intrinsic mobility; in other words, the potential to enact community movement on periodic occasions for regular pasturing shifts or in extenuating circumstances. Many herder communities retained the capability of distant migrations, with their tent homes and herds on the hoof, even if they stayed most of the year within a small verdant stretch of a few kilometers.
The defining characteristic of Inner Asian nomads is thus more their pastoral capital than their potential migrations, returning us to the pastoral root of the term “nomad.”30 Herds of livestock were managed just as fields of crops were, with long-term strategies of material and labor investments, organized partitions and rotations, and harvests with larger labor pools organized for maximum profits. Prehistoric herders in the Eurasian steppes employed a variety of sophisticated livestock management strategies. Pasturing circuits particular to their local geographies maximized grazing potential, extensions of animal birthing seasons increased production of pastoral products, and foddering herds with collected grasses or even millet to safeguard animals during the cold months.31
Capital in pastoral societies such as the Xiongnu could take on multiple forms, all of which fostered efficient control of wealth and institutionalized wealth inequality that could support political elites.32 But beyond the material capital of actual herd animals, there is also a host of social capital embedded within the relations and agreements of pastoral communities. These include contracts for the sharing or loaning of livestock; the use of particular grasslands, especially when venturing outside of regular circuits; and the management of both animals and lands.33 Complementing these contracts is a range of cultural capital embodied in critical knowledge of the geographic landscapes and social networks navigated by herder households and the leaders of pastoral communities.
And just as these animals could be moved to new grazing grounds, so were they more easily moved to trading places or harvesting labor pools, assembled for taxation, and partitioned out to new households and herders. Livestock particular to different regions, be they yaks in the north or camels in the south, could be moved between different regions of Inner Asia. As herds constituted motile wealth “on the hoof” distinct from crops fixed to the land, unharvested stock was more easily moved along with and between the equally mobile communities. With widespread individual mobility afforded by horse riding, people could also easily move between communities or be mobilized for larger endeavors, military or otherwise.
Gainful management of livestock requires sufficient grass for feeding them as well as sufficient people for herding and harvesting them. Many households manage their herds through cooperative communities of families that reside together for significant portions of the year. In Mongolia, these units are traditionally referred to as khoton or khot-ail, the latter being a binome referring to the herder “households” (ail) that shared a “corral” (khot) of their collective livestock.34 Each communal unit was centered on a collective herd, rather than stuck to the land as at ordained crop fields, and tied not so much to a specific plot of pasture as to a particular circuit of continually negotiated pastures. While many herder communities change composition with varied seasonal encampments, these physically fluid collectives retained their social identity for cooperative
