Artefacts show sophistication of ancient nomads

Ancient Greeks had a word for the people who lived on the wild, arid Eurasian steppes stretching from the Black Sea to the border of China. They were nomads, which meant "roaming about for pasture". They were wanderers and, not infrequently, fierce mounted warriors. Essentially, they were "the other" to the agricultural and increasingly urban civilisations that emerged in the first millennium BC. 

A gold and turquoise plaque of a standing argali found at Shilikty 3, Kurgan 82, from the eighth to seventh century BC [Credit: New York Times]

As the nomads left no writing, no one knows what they called themselves. To their literate neighbors, they were the ubiquitous and mysterious Scythians or the Saka, perhaps one and the same people. In any case, these nomads were looked down on — the other often is — as an intermediate or an arrested stage in cultural evolution. They had taken a step beyond hunter-gatherers but were well short of settling down to planting and reaping, or the more socially and economically complex life in town. 

But archaeologists in recent years have moved beyond this mindset by breaking through some of the vast silences of the Central Asian past. 

These excavations dispel notions that nomadic societies were less developed than many sedentary ones. Grave goods from as early as the eighth century BC show that these people were prospering through a mobile pastoral strategy, maintaining networks of cultural exchange (not always peacefully) with powerful foreign neighbours like the Persians and later the Chinese. 

A wool embroidery of a winged bull [Credit: New York Times]

Some of the most illuminating discoveries supporting this revised image are now coming from burial mounds, called kurgans, in the Altai Mountains of eastern Kazakhstan, near the borders with Russia and China. From the quality and workmanship of the artefacts and the number of sacrificed horses, archaeologists have concluded that these were burials of the society's elite in the late fourth and early third centuries BC. By gift, barter or theft, they had acquired prestige goods, and in time their artisans adapted them in their own impressive artistic repertory. 

Almost half of the 250 objects in a new exhibition, "Nomads and Networks: The Ancient Art and Culture of Kazakhstan", are from these burials of a people known as the Pazyrk culture. The material, much of which is on public display for the first time, can be seen at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University, on loan from Kazakhstan's four national museums. 

Two quietly spectacular examples are 13 gold pieces of personal adornment, known as the Zhalauli treasure of fanciful animal figures; and the Wusun diadem, a gold openwork piece with inlaid semiprecious stones from a burial in the Kargaly Valley in southern Kazakhstan. The diadem blends nomad and Chinese characteristics, including composite animals in the Scytho-Siberian style and a horned dragon in an undulating cloudscape. 

A teardrop-shaped gold plaque [Credit: New York Times]

Artefacts from recent kurgan digs include gold pieces; carved wood and horn; a leather saddle; a leather pillow for the deceased's head; and textiles, ceramics and bronzes. Archaeologists said the abundance of prestige goods in the burials showed the strong social differentiation of nomad society. 

Jennifer Y. Chi, the institute's chief curator, writes in the exhibit's catalogue, published by Princeton University Press, that the collection portrays "a world of nomadic groups that, far from being underdeveloped, fused distinct patterns of mobility with apparently sophisticated ritual practices expressive of a close connection to the natural world, to complex burial practices and to established networks and contacts with the outside world". 

Walking through the exhibit, Chi pointed to nomad treasures, remarking, "The popular perception of these people as mere wanderers has not caught up with the new scholarship." 

Kurgan 10 during an excavation [Credit: New York Times]

Excavation at the Altai kurgans, near the village of Berel, was begun in 1998 by a team led by Zainolla S. Samashev, director of the Margulan Institute of Archaeology, on a natural terrace above the Bukhtarma River. Some work had been done there by Russians in the 19th century. But the four long lines of kurgans, at least 70 clearly visible, invited more systematic exploration. 

Of the 24 Berel kurgans investigated so far, Samashev said, the two he started with were among the largest. The mounds, about 30 metres in diameter, rise about three to five metres above the surrounding surface. The pit itself is about four metres deep and lined with logs. At the base of Kurgan 11, he said, the arrangement of huge stones let the cold air in but not out. 

This and other physical aspects of the pits created permafrost, which preserved much of the organic matter in the graves — though looting long ago disturbed permafrost conditions. Still, enough survived of bones, hair, nails and some flesh to tell that some of the bodies had tattoos and had been embalmed. Hair of the buried men had been cut short and covered with wigs. 

A drawing of Kurgan 11 [Credit: New York Times]

The Kazakh conservator of the artefacts, Altynbekov Krym, said that remains in several kurgans were a challenge. "Everything was jumbled together, getting moldy almost immediately," he said, and that it "took six years experimenting to create a new methodology to clean and preserve the material." 

Samashev said that his international crew, which is limited by climate to summer work, had excavated at least one kurgan a year. Several were burials of lesser figures. These were usually only a man and one horse. Kurgan 11 had a man who apparently met a violent death in his 30s; a woman who died later; and 13 horses, dressed in formal regalia before they were sacrificed. 

So many horses, found in a separate section of the pit, affirmed the man's lofty social status. Their leather saddles with embroidered cloth survived, as well as bridle and other tack decorated with plaques of real and mythical animals — like griffins, which had the body of a tiger or lion with wings and the head of a bird. 

A feline face and stylised ornaments from horse tack wood, and tin and gold foil, late 4th - early 3rd century BC [Credit: New York Times]

Soren Stark, an assistant professor of Central Asian art and archaeology at the NYU institute, said networks of contacts with the outside world were crucial to the political structure of the people throughout the Altai and Tianshan mountains. 

On the most basic level, they moved with the seasons by horse and camel, tending the flocks of sheep and goats that gave them the meat, milk, wool and hides of their pastoral economy. To make the most out of grasslands that were only seasonally productive, they went in small family groups into the highland meadows for summer grazing and returned to the lowlands in winter. They crossed broad plains to avoid overgrazing any one marginal pasture. 

At their late autumn and winter campsites, herders assembled in large groups and engaged in tribal hunts and rituals. The exhibition includes bronze cauldrons, presumably for preparing communal feasts, and several bronze stands, including one with a seated man holding a cup and facing a horse, that have the experts puzzled. Equally enigmatic are the symbols on rock faces that perhaps mark sacred places. 

A copper alloy tray on conical stand with a mounted archer in centre and horned animals around the rim [Credit: New York Times]

From the camps, parties of mounted warriors set out to raid settlements, both to supplement their meager resources and to obtain luxury goods coveted by their leaders. Stark said the nomad elite considered such goods necessities to be displayed and distributed to key followers "to build up and sustain their political power." 

As their networks widened, foreign influences, notably Persian, began to appear in nomadic artefacts from the sixth to the fourth centuries BC. The griffin, for example, originated in the West by way of the Persian Empire, centered in what is now Iran; the nomads modified it to have two heads of birds of prey topped by elk horns. Beginning in the third century BC, Chinese luxury items, like the Wusun diadem, appeared in nomad burials, mainly associated with Han dynasty. According to Chinese accounts, the Wusun nomads may have furthered contacts between Central Asian nomads and Han China, at the time expanding westward and in need of horses in its campaign against borderland rivals. 

For all their networking, the nomads of the first millennium BC never failed to apply their own imaginative touches to the foreign artefacts they acquired. Chi, the curator, said the nomads transformed the fantastic animals of others into even more fantastic versions: boars curled in teardrop shapes and griffins that seemed to change their parts in a single image. 

By these enigmatic symbols, a prewriting culture communicated its worldview from a vast and ungenerous land that it could never fully tame — any more than these people of the horse were ever ready to settle down. 

Author: John Noble Wilford | Source: The New York Times [March 13, 2012]