Bibliography: Nomad Society, The Xiongnu, and Archaeology

Bibliography: Nomad Society, The Xiongnu, and Archaeology

Nomad Society

K. Gronbech, "The Steppe Region in World History," Acta Orientalia 23 (1959): 43-56; 24 (1959): 15-28; 25 (1960): 1-14.
An excellent overview of the geography and history of the steppes written by an eminent scholar that is still worth reading. Some of his imagery is quite memorable.
L. Krader, "The Ecology of Nomadic Pastoralism," International Social Science Journal 11 (1959): 499-510.
To understand the nomads and their history, one needs to keep in mind the basic elements of their economy, that is, providing their animals with adequate feed. We may look at the nomad as living a disadvantaged life, but as Krader points out, "The nomadic pastoral economy is characterized by a low outlay of labour and capital. The return from such an outlay is relatively high compared to the return which the farmers of Asia get when reckoned against their outlay of labour and capital."
W. Goldschmidt, "A General Model for Pastoral Social Systems," Pastoral Production and Society, L'¨¦quipe ¨¦cologie et anthropologie des soci¨¦t¨¦s pastorales (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979), pp. 15-27.
A general discussion of pastoralism world-wide, discussing a range of issues including social organization, personality factors, and religious beliefs. "[P]eople who live by herding domestic animals have a pride, a hateur, a strong sense of individual worth and a strong sense of the nobility of pastoralism as a calling."
A.M. Khazanov, "Characteristic Features of Nomadic Communities in the Eurasian Steppes," in Wolfgang Weissleder, ed., The Nomadic Alternative (The Hague: Mouton, 1978), pp. 119-126.
A short piece by the author of one of the standard studies of pastoral nomadism that reviews the variety of types of nomadism, discusses some of its essential features, and concludes with some debatable observations.
C. Humphrey, "The Uses of Genealogy: A Historical Study of the Nomadic and Sedentarized Buryat," in Pastoral Production and Society, pp. 349-360.
By comparing two communities of Buryats, one partially sedentarized and the other still following the more traditional nomadic life-style, Humphrey brings out in vivid form the way in which religion, genealogy and claims to land are woven together.
P. Burnham, "Spatial mobility and Political Centralization in Pastoral Societies," in Pastoral Production and Society, pp. 349-360.
A perceptive study of the way that the mobility inherent in the pastoral nomadic societies can affect social organization, and the effect of external factors on a variety of issues such as centralization, stratification, and egalitarianism.
W. Irons, "Political Stratification among Pastoral Nomads," in Pastoral Production and Society, pp. 361-374.
This article explores the question of how political structures might evolve within the world of pastoral nomadic societies given their mobility and more natural tendencies toward a fragmentary and centrifugal trajectory.
P.C. Salzman, "Inequality and Oppression in Nomadic Society," in Pastoral Production and Society, pp. 429-446.
Starting with the statement that "Societies are formed by coercion, and reformed by conflict," Salzman explores the question of how and why stratification emerges in nomadic societies, and the extent to which such features are imposed or are seen as beneficial by the society at large. Such considerations are useful in dealing with the nomad states such as that of the Xiongnu.
E. McEwen, "Nomadic Archery: Some Observations on Composite Bow Design and Construction," in Philip Denwood, ed. Arts of the Eurasian Steppelands. Colloquies on Art & Archaeology in Asia No. 7 (London: Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art, 1978), pp. 188-202.
S.I. Vajnshtejn, "The Problem of Origin and Formation of the Economic-Cultural Type of Pastoral Nomads in the Moderate Belt of Eurasia," in Weissleder, ed., The Nomadic Alternative, pp. 127-133.
This is an example of the Russian approach to the question of pastoral nomads and their socio-cultural developments. Vajnshtein is the author of an important study of the nomads of Tuva.
L. Krader, "The Origin of the State among the Nomads," Pastoral Production and Society, pp. 331-334.
A study highly theoretical that focuses largely on the Mongol state but that has also some light to throw on that of the Xiongnu as well. His discussion of the noxot or retainers of the rulers of the Mongols is especially interesting.
Nicola Di Cosmo, "State Formation and Periodization in Inner Asian History" Journal of World History 10/1 (1999): 1-40.
A conceptual study of the phenomena of state formation and periodization of nomad societies over time. He provides much to think about on these subjects, although there is also much about which one may not agree.
Nicola Di Cosmo, "Introduction: Inner Asian Ways of Warfare in Historical Perspective," in Nicola Di Cosmo, ed., Inner Asian Warfare (500-1800) (Leiden: Brill, 2002), pp. 1-29.
The military effectiveness of the northern nomads, including the Xiongnu, against the much larger numbers of sedentary populations has always been a striking feature in the history of Inner Asia, as well as in other parts of the world. But at the same time, there is the problem the nomads faced in sustaining their superiority on the field. All of this is discussed in this excellent article; a large part of it can also be found in his book Ancient China and its Enemies.
Thomas Barfield, "Steppe Empires, China, and the Silk Route: Nomads as a Force in International Trade and Politics," in Anatoly M. Khazanov and Andre Wink, Nomads in the Sedentary World (Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press, 2001), pp. 234-249.
Basing himself on his theory that nomad empires were organized to force the Chinese to hand over some of its wealth, this gave the Xiongnu (and later, the Mongols) the wherewithal to engage as a major player on the Silk Road.

The Xiongnu

*Burton Watson, transl., Records of the Grand Historian, Translated from the Shih chi of Ssu-ma Ch'ien, 2 vols. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1961). The Shih chi (Shiji), completed about 80 BC, is one of the most important sources for our knowledge about the Xiongnu. Chap. 110 "The Account of the Hsiung-nu," pp. 155-92, and chap. 111 "The Biographies of General Wei Ch'ing and the Swift Cavalry General Ho Ch'¨¹-ping," pp. 192-238, are directly relevant to our expedition. A number of dissertations have been written or are being written about chap. 110, but this fine translation by the very able Burton Watson will do for our purposes.
J. Otto Maenchen-Helfen, The World of the Huns: Studies in Their History and Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973).
The identification of the names Hun and Xiongnu was long denied by this author, but the question was decided in the affirmative by the decipherment of the Sogdian Ancient Letters. Maenchen-Helfen accepted this find but insisted that while the names were the same, the peoples who carried the name Hun were not necessarily identical. This book is a study in depth of all who were known as Huns, and it is exceptional in its grand sweep of the subject.
*Thomas Barfield, The Hsiung-nu Imperial Confederacy: Organization and Foreign Policy," Journal of Asian Studies 41 (1981): 45-61.
A relatively concise summary of the Xiongnu empire, history, organization and relations with China, by the author of one of the more recent studies of the nomad-Chinese interactions over the centuries. His thesis is that the formation of the Xiongnu empire had as its main purpose the exploitation of the wealth of China, and that without the Chinese economy to exploit there would have been no Xiongnu empire. This view has been disputed by Di Cosmo, among others.
Chang Chun-shu, "Military Aspects of Han Wu-ti's Northern and Northwestern Campaigns," Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 21 (1966): 68-173. Available on-line via JSTOR.
Michael Loewe, "The Campaigns of Han Wu-ti," in Frank A. Kierman and John K. Fairbank, eds. Chinese Ways in Warfare (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1974), pp. 67-122.
Michael Loewe is renown as an expert on the Han, and here he turns his attention to the warfare between the Han and the Xiongnu during the reign of Wudi (140-87 BCE). All that we know of the subject is from the Chinese sources, so there is obviously a certain bias, but Loewe attempts to maintain a balance where he can. He includes a description of the loss of Li Ling's army and the capture of the general, a famous episode in Chinese history.
A. V. Davydova, "The Ivolga Gorodische (A Monument of the Hsiung-nu Culture in the Trans-Baikal Region)," Acta Archaeologica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 20 (1968): 209-245.
Rafe De Crespigny, Northern Frontier: The Policies and Strategies of the Later Han Empire (Canberra: Faculty of Asian Studies, Australian National University, 1984).
This is a book-length study (630 pages) of this topic with full translations of texts, maps, glossaries, and notes (pp. 445-559), during the period of the break-up of the Xiongnu empire as well as the decline of the Han dynasty. This is a good resource book but more than we will need for this expedition.
Nicola Di Cosmo, "The Northern Frontier in Pre-Imperial China," in The Cambridge History of Ancient China, ed. Michael Loewe and Edward L. Shaughnessy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 909-966.
This chapter only touches on the Xiongnu in the last few pages; the coverage is from the second millenium down to the early third century BCE. Much of the text deals with the archaeological remains and with what little is known of the history of the northern area in this early time.
*Nicola Di Cosmo, "Ancient Inner Asian Nomads: Their Economic Basis and Its Significance in Chinese History." The Journal of Asian Studies 53/4 (1994): 1092-1126. A copy is posted to our Yahoo group site.
This is an important article, and especially made the point that Inner Asian nomadism was not "pure," that is, that it should be seen as a mixed economy with an agricultural component.
Sechin Jagchidand Van Jay Symons, Peace, War and Trade along the Great Wall: Nomadic-Chinese Interaction through Two Millenia (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989).
Prof. Jagchid, a Mongol scholar who taught at various universities in Taiwan and at Brigham Young University in this country, provides a perspective from the other side of the border, as it were. Interspersed with a review of the history of that relationship, he maintains that peace came only when there was a balance of power between the northern peoples and the Chinese--preponderance of strength on either side would lead to warfare.
Sechin Jagchid, "The Historical Interaction beween the Nomadic People in Mongolia and the Sedentary Chinese," in Gary Seaman and Daniel Marks, eds., Rulers from the Steppe: State Formation on the Eurasian Periphery (Los Angeles: Ethnographics/ University of Southern California, 1991), pp. 63-91.
The article is a very general account of the nomad-Chinese interactions from the Han to the Qing, that emphasizes the need of the nomads for the products of the sedentary Chinese while the Chinese could manage quite well without what the north had to offer; that imbalance led at times to armed struggles. Jagchid's views differ in many ways from those of some Western scholars.
Thomas J. Barfield, "Inner Asia and Cycles of Power in China's Imperial Dynastic History," in Seaman and Marks, eds., Rulers from the Steppe, pp. 21-62.
An overview of the often troubled relationship between China and the northern peoples over time. The Han-Xiongnu interlude is only a part of the treatment. Barfield repeats his thesis that nomad empires were constructed to milk the Chinese state, but the chapter is useful for the general background that he provides.
E.G. Pulleyblank, "The Chinese and Their Neighbors in Prehistoric and Early Historic Times," in David Keightley, ed., The Origins of Chinese Civilizations (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), pp. 446-456.
In this article Prof. Pulleyblank reviews the information about the various peoples who surrounded the Chinese state(s) and their linguistic affiliations. The northern tier, including the Xiongnu, are on pages 446-456. He deals with the Chinese sources in his rebuttal of the views of Loewe and Hulsew¨¦ in his review, "Han China in Central Asia," International History Review 3 (1981): 278-296.
Chusei Suzuki, "China's Relations with Inner Asia: The Hsiung-nu, Tibet," in John Fairbank, ed., The Chinese World Order: Traditional China's Foreign Relations (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1968), pp. 180-197.
A brief discussion (pp. 180-192) of the Confucian notion that the "barbarians" would be "civilized" by the influence of the virtuous emperor and become tributaries of the Chinese state, and the failure of that policy.
Nobuo Yamada, "The Formation of the Hsiung-nu Nomadic State," Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 36/1-3 (1982): 575-582.
Yamada carefully analyzes the texts concerning the Xiongnu and concludes that the organization and titles ascribed to the Xiongnu refer to a military organization and ought not be taken to describe an administrative appparatus or "state."
Yu Ying-shih, "The Hsiung-nu," in Denis Sinor, ed., Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 118-149.
A short summary of the history of the Xiongnu, with the anecdotes from the Chinese sources. This treatment does not attempt any analysis at a deeper level but generally follows the traditional Chinese views. The perspective of Prof. Y¨¹'s earlier book, Trade and Expansion in China: A Study in the Structure of Sino-Barbarian Economic Relations (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967) is pretty well reflected in its title.

Central Asiatic Journal

Archaeology

Erdy Miklos, "Hun and Xiongnu Type Cauldron Finds throughout Euasia," Eurasian Studies Yearbook 67(1993): 5-94.
The author with a single-minded determination has traced every known occurrence of the distinctive nomad cauldron across Asia and into Europe tracing what he considers to the be the routes of the Hun migrations during which they maintained the ethnographic, metallurgical and religious characteristics of these vessels.
S. Minayev, "On the Origin of the Hsiung-nu," Information Bulletin, International Association for the Cultures of Central Asia 9 (1985): 69-78.
Since written sources cannot trace the origins of the Xiongnu, Minayev turns to archaeology. He summarizes what is known of the various types of burials associated with the Xiiongnu, points out the larger ones such as at Noin Ula are to be dated during the heyday of the Xiongnu empire, and lists the charcteristics of the orinary Xiongnu tombs in general. He finds a similar complex of burials in the upper Xiajiadian culture south and southeast of the Trans-Baikal area and Mongolia of the 8th-5th centuries BCE which may be associated with the proto-Xiongnu stage.
_____, "Niche Grave Burials of the Xiong-nu Period in Central Asia," Information Bulletin, International Association for the Cultures of Central Asia 17(1990): 91-99.
Niche burials, that is, burials that consist of an excavation with the body placed in a area dug into one of the side walls, are found in the area controlled by the Xiongnu in the 2nd-1st centuries BCE, while they contain grave goods that can be associated with the Xiongnu, still differ in structure from the type of burial found in the central Xiongnyu area of the Trans-Baikal, Mongolia and the Ordos. Minyaev concludes that these burials are of non-Xiongnu peoples who were a part of the Xiongnu confederation, and retained some of their original customs.
Sophia-Karen Psarras, "Exploring the North: Non-Chinese Cultures of the Late Warring States and Han," Monumenta Serica 42 (1994): 1-125.
_____, "Xiongnu Culture: Identification and Dating," Central Asiatic Journal 39/1 (1995): 102-136.
_____, "Pieces of Xiongnu Art," Central Asiatic Journal 40/2 (1996): 234-259.
Psarras wrote her doctoral dissertation at the Sarbonne on Xiongnu archaeology and art, and these articles present the result of her researches. Her work is to be noted for its precision and focus, and provides a solid basis for a study of this area.
Jenny So and Emma C. Bunker, Traders and Raiders on China's Northern Frontier (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1995).
This is an elegant catalog of an exhibit drawn from private and museum collections that was shown at the Freer and Sackler Gallery, Washington D.C. While the coverage begins earlier than the Xiongnu period, the discussion of the steppe art and the influence that art had in China is excellent. The illustrations of the items are also of a very high quality. However, since none of the pieces included were excavated scientifically (as it were), there may be some questions about dating.
Camilla Trever. Excavations in Northern Mongolia, 1924-25, Memoirs of the Academy of History of Material Culture 3 (Leningrad, 1932).
This is a report, more than a summary, of the important Noin Ula excavations, in Northern Mongolia in the Selenga River basin, where some 212 tumuli were found. Because the graves were flooded by underground water, the organic material was reserved to an amazing degree. The report covers the contents of four tumuli, nos. 1, 6, 23 and 25, with plates and detailed descriptions.
S. I. Rudenko, Die kultur der Hsiung-nu und die Hugelgraber von Noin Ula (Bonn: Rudolph Habelt Verlag, 1969).
This is a translation of the original Russian report on this important site. Trever, above, can serve in its place.
A.V. Davydova. Ivolginskii arkheologicheskii kompleks. T. 1. Ivolginskoe gorodishche/The Ivolga Archaeological Complex. Vol. 1: The Ivolga Fortress. Arkheologicheskie pamiatniki siunnu, Vyp. 1 (St. Petersburg: Peterburgskoe vostokovedenie, 1995).
This includes an English summary of a report on a fortified Xiongnu settlement site near Ulan-Ude, in the Buryat Republic, probably dating to the 2nd and 1st centuries BCE. The evidence of extensive agricultural activity confirms Di Cosmo's assertion that the Xiongnu economy was not that dependent on China for grains and craft products.
_____, Ivolginskii arkheologicheskii kompleks. T. 2. Ivolginskii mogil'nik/The Ivolga Archaeological Complex. Vol. 2. The Ivolga Cemetery. Arkheologicheskie pamiatniki siunnu, Vyp. 2 (St. Petersburg, 1996).
A report on an important Xiongnu site the excavation of which has provided important information on a whole range of issues including the funereal customs, the populatiion, weapons, food, clothing, and so forth. The English summary is on pages 159-166.
S. Miniaev, "The Excavation of Xiongnu Sites in the Buryatia Republic," Orientations 26/10 (1995): 44-45.
A popular report on the discovery of a second settlement by Davydova, named Dureny-1, and a third site, the Derestuy cemetery, excavated by Miniaev from 1984 to 1992. In summation, Miniaev says these excavations show the Xiongnu to have been skilled in crafting a variety of materials and to have pursued a wide range of activities.
P. Murail et al., "The man, the woman and the hyoid bone: from archaeology to the burial practices of the Xiongnu people (Egyin Gol valley, Mongolia)," Antiquity 74/3 (2000): 531-536. Available on-line through Infotrac. "A man and a woman were found in a double burial dating from the 1st century BC and located in a Xiongnu burial site in northern Mongolia. An offering box at the head of the man's coffin contained both the remains of domestic animals and a human hyoid bone. The skeleton of the man was complete whereas the woman's hyoid bone was missing. The isolated hyoid bone could belong to the woman, which suggests the removal of her tongue and probably her sacrifice."
Roger Cribb, Nomads in Archaeology (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991; reprt. 1993).
While the book deals with Near and Middle Eastern nomad sites, it may be useful in considering the nature of nomad sites in other parts of the world. There is a good review and discussion by Ralph S. Solecki, "Ephemeral Archaeology," The Review of Archaeology, Fall 1997: 26-32.