Dear Colleagues and Students,

In celebration of its inaugural semester, the Chinese Studies program will hold a series of lectures during Spring term. The first lecture, entitled "Empire and Domestic Economy: Continuity and Change in Mongolia’s Bronze and Iron Age Archaeological Landscape" by Dr. Jean-Luc Houle of Western Kentucky University, will be held Friday, February 17, 1-2pm in 420 Patterson Office Tower. This lecture is co-sponsored by the Russian Studies program.

 

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Empire and Domestic Economy: Continuity and Change in Mongolia’s Bronze and Iron Age Archaeological Landscape

Professor Jean-Luc Houle, Western Kentucky University

The apex of political complexity among Inner Asian pastoralists was Chinggis Khan’s mighty empire of the 13th and 14th centuries, along with the earlier Xiongnu confederation (200 BCE to 200 CE). The Mongol Empire was the largest continuous land empire of all time, while the Xiongnu was extremely long-lived, dominating the entire eastern Eurasian steppe from the end of the third century BCE through the middle of the first century CE, and surviving as a minor power into the fourth century. What was it that led to the success of these great polities? Are there lessons to be learned?

Archaeology as a discipline is uniquely suited to examining social change over time from varying perspectives. However, the diachronic study of prehistoric mobile pastoralist societies in the Eurasian Steppes and the development of societal complexity among such groups have been mostly limited to documenting change at the macro-level. This presentation will discuss how social change manifests itself at different scales. As a window into the past, I will explore this through the transformation of the archaeological landscape in central Mongolia from the Late Bronze Age to the Iron Age period when the first state-like nomadic polity, the Xiongnu, appeared on the Eurasian steppes.

In doing so, this presentation will address an important question in the anthropological literature on nomadic pastoralism, that is, the impact of major economic and social changes on nomadic society and pastoral subsistence—a question still very pertinent today in various world regions.