Reconceiving The Nomad: Tropes, Archaeological Reality, And Why It Matters

Reconceiving The Nomad: Tropes, Archaeological Reality, And Why It Matters

AIA Society: New York City
Lecturer: Tekla Schmaus

Much of our popular conception of ancient Eurasian nomads comes from the written records of their sedentary neighbors. Whether we look at Herodotus in the west or Sima Qian in the east, we come away with an image of the nomad as warlike and parasitic on sedentary societies. But the Greeks and the Chinese were not unbiased, and had social and political reasons to portray their Scythian or Xiongnu neighbors as exotic others. While some parts of the written descriptions are utterly fantastical, archaeological investigations of settlements in Central Asia have shown that other parts of the written record are astonishingly accurate. I’ll cover some recent archaeological discoveries that tell us about the everyday lives of people in these groups, and I’ll discuss other lines of evidence we draw upon to recreate ancient lifeways and social organization in Eurasia. Finally, I’ll argue that a more accurate understanding of groups like the Scythians and Xiongnu is not just important to the study of ancient history. Rather, the way we understand ancient nomads also has important implications for the ways we understand and interact with contemporary mobile groups.

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