China-Steppe Relations in Historical Perspective PDF

CHINA-STEPPE RELATIONS IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
Nicola Di Cosmo
The present essay aims to present a reflection on modes of interpretation of a particular kind of
pre-modern historical formation: the so-called steppe empire, or nomad empire. In the field of
Chinese studies there has been growing interest over the past fifteen to twenty years in the role
of “frontiers” in Chinese history, and in “frontier studies”1. The starting point of this reflection
can be encapsulated in the following statement: down to the modern period we can regard Eurasia
and the civilizations it encompasses as a meaningful unit of historical research especially (and,
perhaps exclusively, although such a claim may be excessive) in the presence of powerful nomadic
empires or thanks to the consequences of their expansion. On the surface, this may seem a
provocative statement, and world historians may object that the “connectivity” one may register
at any point in time between different parts of Eurasia may already be sufficient ground to argue
for the existence of long-distance networks justifying the use of a Eurasian-wide analytical gauge.
On the other hand, the proposition that the formation of steppe empires generated or accel-
erated even deeper and wider connections has been amply demonstrated (e.g., Allsen 2001, 210–
211), or at any rate not easy to challenge – hence the question whether some special historical
role should be attributed to them. Attempts to answer this question would immediately run
into the problem of the mercurial nature of steppe empires: as a historical animal, they have
been extremely hard to define, and lacking autochthonous sources one is often in the position
of illustrators of sixteenth-century natural science books, who had to depict a giraffe or a platy-
pus without ever having laid eyes on the real thing, imagined simply from the descriptions of
travelers and missionaries. Still, there are questions of methods that need to be addressed in
order to attain a more accurate description. Such efforts may help us in an effort to describe the
nomads’ political relations with sedentary powers, their attitude to governance, and thus “his-
toricize” them by unveiling transformative processes peculiar to their own evolution.
An explanation of how these empires came about and what impact they had on the regions
touched by their expansion involves matters surrounded by much controversy, and a single in-
terpretation remains, so far, elusive. What is at stake is whether or not it is possible to assign to
these formations a historical role that recognizes differences and discontinuities but at the same
time captures possible equivalences and similarities. Most approaches that aim to classify no-
madic empires into distinct types are subject to an in-built bias, namely, an exclusive focus on
structures that completely bypasses the actual historical contingencies and pressures under
which certain polities came into being. If we are to give historical meaning to these empires,
then the “conflagration” itself, the formation of a steppe empire, cannot be overlooked in all
phases of its development: from the emergence of the empire to its subsequent expansion, and
to its later transformations.
1
E.g., Harrell 1995; Di Cosmo/Wyatt 2005; Crossley et
al. 2006; Perdue 2005; Dai 2009.
50 N ICOLA D I C OSMO
THREE CLASSICAL PROBLEMS
As we attempt to examine the historical role of early nomadic empires along the Great Wall of
China, I propose first to reexamine three assumptions commonly encountered in the scholarly
literature. The first assumes the existence of a rigid separation between steppe and sown, that
is, a dichotomy between two bounded entities: pastoralists and agriculturalists, or nomads and
sedentary people. The second regards the conceptualization of nomadic history according to
cycles of concentration and fragmentation of political power. The third consists of what we may
call analogical thinking, in the sense that analogies are often drawn between “nomads” of dif-
ferent periods based on the assumption of similarity (and equivalence) between them.
Dichotomies
In the geographical approach to the relations between China and the steppe championed by
Owen Lattimore, the northern frontier of China has been defined as a zone of transition between
ecological, economic and cultural systems that would grow more differentiated over time along
the critical watershed constituted by the Mongolia plateau, which allowed for irrigated agricul-
ture in the Yellow River valley while the more arid region of deserts and steppe to the north de-
veloped a pastoral economy (Lattimore 1962b, 176–177). This became the Great Wall frontier
zone, and the societies and polities that emerged on either side were destined to be locked in a
tug-o’-war of openness and closure, advance and retreat, symbiosis and separation, plunder and
commerce, war and peace (Jagchid/Symons 1989). This image of profoundly and irreconcilably
dichotomized worlds has been the inspiration of various theories of the development of nomadic
polities and the main frame of reference for specific events (wars, invasions, conquest, and the
like), whether limited in time or recurrent. Encased in this binary construction are all phenomena
that can be observed along the frontier down to the demise of the Qing dynasty in the early
twentieth century: steppe vs. sown, martial values vs. cultural and moral values, tribe vs. state,
khan vs. emperor, nomadism vs. agriculture, military councils vs. administrative machineries,
plunder and tribute vs. taxation, and so forth. The underlying assumption is that people living
under such different ecological and economic conditions developed, over centuries and millen-
nia, different skills, lifestyles, social structures, and political systems whose interaction generated
the dynamics taking place on the frontier.
In this understanding, the first and most important feature of the frontier as a contact zone is
that it separates – and unites – two distinct and incompatible economic systems that emerged
after a long process of adaptation to two separate ecologies, one warm and moist, the other cold
and dry. In China, civilization emerged in the form of ancestral cults, rituals, and bureaucracies
based on stable, sedentary urban societies sustained by intensive agriculture. In the steppe, an-
imal husbandry relied an extensive use of the land, and the sparse, low-density population was
organized into kin groups and political unions with claims over a given territory. From the be-
ginning of its recorded history China (or the Hua-Xia people) established state institutions, and
gradually developed a common political culture and a set of values shared across the various
communities (states and kingdoms) that constituted its cultural sphere during the Springs and
Autumns and Warring States periods (770–221 BCE). The nomads developed a different type
of social organization, easily coalescing into armies under the leadership of a warrior aristocracy
C HINA -S TEPPE R ELATIONS IN H ISTORICAL P ERSPECTIVE 51
that could threaten China. The relationship, however, was not constantly hostile and included
border trade and barter exchanges that varied according to diplomatic, political, or other vari-
ables.
The notion of having two separate systems meeting along political, cultural and ecological
frontier zones is the lynchpin of theories of dependency, codependency, and co-evolution, which
will be explored below, as well as theories of the frontier as the place that could generate and
sustain nomadic empires. These theories have focused on the existence of an economic differ-
ential between a sedentary and a nomadic economy, assuming especially that the nomadic econ-
omy was not self-sufficient, and therefore that its permanent deficit drove nomads to seek the
products they lacked from neighboring sedentary states (Khazanov 1984, 69–84). Moreover, the
same line of thought assumed the existence of a political differential that was compensated by
the adoption of more advanced forms of organization. Institutions that were meant to sustain
nomadic empires, states (or chiefdoms) larger than tribes, and eventually khanates and empires,
were borrowed from the more sophisticated sedentary states. These two assumptions are critical
to the construction of a model of state formation among early nomads in which nomadic insuf-
ficiencies and needs are transformed into a “push” force that placed a continuous pressure upon
sedentary people, made nomads compete with large sedentary states, and provided the incentive
to import and adapt institutions from them (Barfield 1989; 2001).
Contrary to these assumptions, archaeological records show a much less clear separation be-
tween opposite and mutually exclusive systems, especially in consideration of the incontrovert-
ible evidence of settlements and limited agriculture in the steppe, presumably to a greater or
lesser extent enabled by climatic variations and local conditions, such as river valleys and what
Lattimore called “steppe oases” (Lattimore 1962a, 157–159). Moreover, close scrutiny of the
historical evidence shows that nomadic encroachment upon sedentary lands, including plunder
and raids, occurs under conditions that are not related to economic need. Even more impor-
tantly, the dynamic of the formation of nomadic states is always, in every historically docu-
mented case, the result of inter-nomadic warfare, and therefore conflicts with sedentary states
appear to have been far less relevant than they are often assumed to be.
In sum, the centrality of the dichotomy between steppe and sown, understood as the
“essence” of relations between China and the nomads from ancient times, continues to act as a
theoretical obstacle to the unbiased evaluation of material evidence, interpretation of historical
sources, and acquisition of additional data through archaeology, climatology, and other sciences
relevant to the history of ancient nomadic societies. Furthermore, the in-built bias of nomad-
sedentary polarity tends to shun case-by-case examinations of historical events and to privilege
instead the construction of abstract models that simply confirm the existence of two opposite
spheres without questioning them.
Cyclicality
A second problem is presented by the notion that the formation of nomadic empires is cyclical.
Traditional Chinese historiography saw disorder and order (war and peace) in terms of cycles
that followed the natural rise and fall of dynasties. The government’s inability to erect solid bar-
riers against the barbarians was one of the potential causes of the fall of a dynasty. Failure to
apply the correct frontier strategy could result in disaster, and from the Han dynasty onward
frontier defense and “barbarian” management became a staple of policy debates, while statesmen
and philosophers fought over specific solutions that the government was to adopt according to
the requirements of the times.
Scholars have viewed cycles as a significant aspect of the formation of nomadic empires. No-
madic powers’ appearance and disappearance, that is, their consolidation into powerful empires
(or “khanates”) and their dissolution into smaller and disarticulated groups (tribes? nations?),
was the natural rhythm of nomadic history. Lattimore’s theory about cycles of nomadic history
(Lattimore 1938) has hardly been challenged. The belief that cycles are intrinsic to nomadic so-
cieties, and that various tribes could be periodically unified under the centralizing power of a
particularly successful military leader, relates to notions of charismatic leadership. The “khan”
was necessary to manage the wider needs of the nomads by augmenting their military force
against sedentary foes and by creating “supratribal” confederacies. If extraction of resources by
nomads is regarded as the key factor in relations along the Great Wall frontier, then nomadic
cycles become a reflex of the cycles of Chinese history, and steppe empires and Chinese dynas-
ties rise and fall in synchrony. We shall expand on this problem in the next section, but let’s just
say that an interpretation of steppe and sedentary powers as two mechanically interlocked forces
acting upon each other as cogwheels of a single mechanism is a theoretical construction that has
yet to be materially proven, and to date is not supported by historical or archaeological evidence.
As influential as this line of thinking has been, from Lattimore to Khazanov, Barfield, and
Kradin2, just to cite a few, the evidence that has been accumulating over the past decades makes
such a theoretical approach simply unworkable.
From a more narrowly historical (rather than archaeological or anthropological) viewpoint,
the old notion that cycles of concentration and disintegration mark the natural rhythm of steppe
history and that these cycles have possibly been induced by binary relationships with sedentary
empires objectively distorts the examination of the contingencies specific to each nomadic em-
pire (Rogers 2007). If the formative process of a nomadic empire is understood as a “recurrent”
event, and the causes between each occurrence are regarded as interchangeable, the contingent
aspects are ultimately negligible and all that matters is the characterization of the cycle itself,
usually in terms of location, intensity, and duration. Moreover, a theory of cyclicality in which
nomadic cycles mirror the cycles of sedentary empires necessarily is predetermined to pay
greater attention to the interaction between nomads and sedentary polities, and therefore to
frontier relations and interactions, than to the dynamics internal to the nomadic world, or be-
tween nomads and other polities that were neither sedentary nor “empires”.
Analogy
A third, more subtle, and therefore more resilient problem is caused by reasoning in terms of
historical analogy. Correspondences and analogies have been registered by placing Herodotus’
description of the Scythians (or other Western accounts) next to Sima Qian’s description of
the Xiongnu (Stuurman 2008; Kim 2009). The portraits of these “barbarians” are uncannily
similar, to the point that one would readily forgive the scholars (e.g., Sinor 1981) who have
seen in these accounts evidence that the ancient Greeks and ancient Chinese were confronted
by very similar peoples, threats, and cultural barriers. According to the insightful analysis by
2
Lattimore 1938; Khazanov 1984; Barfield 1989; Kradin
2002; 2008.
Hartog, the steppe nomads, and in particular the Scythians, were the literary construction of
a Greek cultural other, a mirror into which the Greeks might look to perceive more sharply
their own civilization (Hartog 1988). Real or imaginary descriptions of the nomads contributed
to the formation of a received stereotype made of a few essential and unchanging characteristics
(Beckwith 2009, xix-xxv) .This mode of thinking has obscured other aspects of what we know
about the nomads: the environment in which they lived, their economic resources, and their
political culture.
Speaking only about Chinese history, the enduring inability to historicize the Inner Asian
nomads is also the result of an insufficient analysis of the dynastic histories’ accounts of the
northern peoples, which of course are the main source as far as literary sources are concerned.
In Chinese historiography there is an inherent bias to “classicize” accounts of foreign peoples
by remaining faithful to general descriptions established in earlier historiographical models.
Nomads always seem to roam around in search of grass and water (Sima Qian 1985, 2879), and
it is unclear whether these accounts represent an objective description of an enduring (and
timeless) nomadic lifestyle or the slavish repetition of literary tropes. Therefore, it is not in
generic similarities but rather in the departures from stereotypes and analogies that we can
possibly identify the specific “signature” of each nomadic people and extract observational el-
ements that come from direct or indirect experience. The greater proximity a document can
be shown to have to a given event, the more accurate the description may be. If we examine
the Hanshu account of the Xiongnu, it is immediately clear how the final assessment by the
historian Ban Gu, in which analogies are drawn between the Xiongnu and the barbarians of
old, is written in a radically different mode from many of the accounts of historical events
(Pines 2004, 79–80). With proper source analysis, the historian should be able to distinguish
between different rhetorical strategies of discussing the Xiongnu and other nomads (Di Cosmo
2010).
Another level of interpretation regards the usefulness of archaeological evidence in historical
research. Extensive investigation of nomadic sites from the Black Sea to Mongolia have demol-
ished the myth of a cohesive cultural complex. It is now amply clear that the “Scythian” world
was made of different communities and archaeological cultures and that we cannot speak of the
Sakas or Scythians as a single historical or cultural phenomenon (Yablonsky 1995). The steppe
peoples to the north of China likewise exhibit great cultural diversity, not only in terms of burial
practices, technology, and art, but in socio-economic terms as well. Some were more dependent
on pastoral nomadism as their main economic activity than others, some were more warlike
than others, and some were able to build large states while other were not. We must therefore
ask ourselves whether it is legitimate to draw analogies in the ways in which Xiongnu, Türks,
and Mongols created their empires and interacted with other empires simply because they be-
longed to the same ethnographic or anthropological category of “steppe nomads”.
Reasoning by analogy establishes a direct but unfortunately inaccurate equivalence between
how these peoples earned their living (assumed to be always the same) and the way in which
they acted politically. We need to at least consider that the socio-economic circumstances of
these nomads varied over time and from community to community, and included different
forms of production that surely affected their political choices. On the other hand, they may
also have shared significant features in their political culture. The transfer and sharing of political
practices depends far more on the “hegemonic” status of a given political culture than on the
socio-economic basis of the people that share it. There are numerous examples of how features
of the governance of the Mongol Empire were adopted by the sedentary societies of Russia,
Iran, India, and China3. The Mongols had inherited many of these political features from the
Khitan and Uyghur imperial traditions, and an osmotic flux of ideas of statecraft and local gov-
ernance surely took place between China and the steppe region. There is in fact no logical reason
to believe that the political culture, attitudes toward statecraft, and ruling ideologies of societies
predominantly made up of pastoral nomads should differ substantially from those of more
mixed communities, such as those we find in southern Manchuria, where agriculture, animal
husbandry, hunting, fishing, and gathering provide a more composite economic basis. Scholars
have sometimes sought in differences in production a greater or lesser propensity towards Sini-
cization (Huang 2011), the former being more impenetrable and refractory and the latter more
porous and amenable. To establish equivalences between the socio-economic structure of a given
community and its political or cultural forms has engendered profound interpretive problems
that can only be corrected by focusing on each historical case.
Another type of analogy that has had a powerful influence concerns the comparative approach
to frontiers, and in particular imperial frontiers. Hadrian’s Wall in England, Alexander’s Wall
in Iran and the Great Wall of China all appear to belong to the same political idiom adopted by
civilization when confronted with the threat of barbarian invasions. However, we need to dis-
tinguish between two entirely separate concepts: the frontier as a historical artifact, which is
specific to a given place and time, and the frontier as civilizational boundary, which can be seen
as a constitutive element of the self-representation of many cultures and civilizations. The
Roman limes, and the Chinese forts and beacon towers along the Great Wall may appear similar
within a discourse of how civilization defined itself, but the actual historical realization of the
frontiers as military, political, and administrative structures with their own institutional, ethnic,
and economic realities is a matter for historical analysis, which cannot be subsumed in a single
matrix or discourse. The distortions potentially produced by analogical reasoning are difficult
to assess, but in general terms they tend to create either a romanticized universalist account or
a set of normative models that are ill-adapted to capture the diversity of historical experiences
they purport to represent.
THE OBJECT OF INVESTIGATION
Since this discussion is about historical method, let me now turn to the object of the investiga-
tion, namely, the formation of ancient “steppe empires”. In the evolution of large nomadic poli-
ties, typically three phases are distinguished. First, there is a phase of incipient statehood, during
which the formation of the empire takes place. This is followed by a period of expansion, con-
solidation, and institution building. From an empirical point of view we can then see that these
central institutions are inherently unstable and, after a while, a prolonged crisis or a series of
crises undermine their effectiveness and eventually cause the political architecture that had been
created to collapse. The “dissolution” phase can take various forms, which may include the de-
tachment and regained independence of previously associated or subject peoples or the emer-
gence of new political subjects. This situation is accompanied by widespread warfare, the
3
E.g., Amitai/Morgan 1999; Halperin 1985; Dardess
2003.
movement of constituencies between opposite camps in search of protection or security, and

the reterritorialization of centers of power.
The idea of such a life cycle of nomadic empires has been extremely influential since it allowed
for early representations of a history of steppe peoples by organizing these empires into a se-
quence. We owe to Joseph de Guignes (1758) the first work that groups together the nomadic
empires into a single historical phylogeny, later followed in a more or less critical manner by
Grousset (1939) and McGovern (1939). Their work represents an enduring and still influential
conceptualization of steppe history, which, for all its appeal, has prevented a deeper historical
analysis of the internal mechanics, historical changes, political contexts and general contingencies
that “fertilized” the birth of successful polities or that caused their downfall. More importantly,
seeking evidence of the continuity or self-conscious development of an imperial tradition of
ruling ideology and statecraft has proved elusive. At closer scrutiny, these formations appear as
discrete phenomena with no apparent linkage to each other besides their being “steppe nomads”:
their languages were different, they had different ancestral (and sacred) places, different origin
myths, different internal social structures, and different tribal names. Aside from very few cases,
such as the succession of the Türks by the Uyghur ruling house, which was the result of extensive
internal struggles within the Türk Empire, it would be difficult to demonstrate a neat or direct
translatio imperii between two such formations. Each empire-builder was the first “khan” of a
new empire, not the restorer of an immanent imperial power or founder of a new dynasty within
a recognized imperial tradition.
We face a thorny problem: how do we reconcile the inherent diversity in and disconnect be-
tween the successive nomadic empires with a representation of their history as belonging to a
single civilization or at least to a single imperial tradition? This is where the question arises of
what (if anything) makes these empires cohere into a single phenomenon. Key to answering this
question are a few similarities that indicate the presence of a shared political culture. Let me
summarize in the following notes some aspects of this shared political culture in relation to two
moments in the life of all steppe empires, namely “formation” and “dissolution”.
Formation
Various theories have been put forth about the formation of steppe empires, some of which pay
special attention to frontier relations and sedentary-nomadic interaction, but one fact is historically
incontrovertible: all large steppe formations about which we have sufficient information – I am
discussing only the peoples to the north of China – arise from a period of intense struggle between
various nomadic groups, not by going to war with sedentary states. The simple, evidential fact is
that the formation of such an empire always has the effect (and perhaps the purpose) of trans-
forming a no longer adequate political order into a new one. The critical role of frontier relations
in the formation of steppe empires has become, as we mentioned above, an entrenched assumption,
which usually goes unquestioned. The logical leap here is that the emergence of an empire on the
frontier presumes that sedentary-nomadic relations are either the only or the main stimulus to
imperial formation, without having first analyzed the relative conditions and scenarios involved.
I shall not review here all the instances of empire formation, except to remark that in each case
particular contingencies are mixed in with aspects that seem to repeat themselves (constants) and
indicate the existence of a shared political culture that transcends ethnic, cultural, religious, and
linguistic differences. While the Eurasian world included different cultures, economic systems,
and ethnicities, such differences were no obstacle to the transmission of a political culture that
was capable of evolving, developing, and incorporating disparate and at times conflicting elements.
As far as I know, it has not been possible to demonstrate a correspondence between specific
economic structures and political and ideological “superstructures”. It is essential to recognize
that no correlation can be established between empires based in a classic “steppe” nomadic re-
gion, such as Mongolia, and those originating in a mixed steppe-forest-farmland area, such as
southern Manchuria. No matter how different their economic bases, they shared numerous fea-
tures, such as a theory of divine sovereignty, common practices in diplomacy and foreign policy,
roughly similar approaches to military and state organization; in all these respects we find more
than a family resemblance.
It may therefore be surmised that centuries of contacts among the aristocratic elites of north
and central Asia there have contributed to the formation of similar patterns of interaction. We
may conjecture that the same mechanisms of mobility and connectivity, dubbed as the Trans-
Eurasian Exchange (Sherratt 2006), that may have facilitated the spread of similar features in the
art (e.g., animal style), burials (e.g., kurgans) and material culture (e.g., several bronze artifacts)
across steppe cultures, may be responsible for the formation of a shared political culture, respon-
sible for forming alliances (through marriages or oaths), supporting sovereign claim by religious
and ideological means, and enforcing certain customary rights and the various ways in which
power was preserved and transmitted within the royal house. It would be incorrect, however, to
think of this shared culture as either unchanging or fully derivative from other traditions.
The transmission of knowledge of imperial statecraft across ethnic and cultural lines over sev-
eral centuries remains an open question, given that no obvious channel, such as oral or written
traditions, can be identified. It is likely, however, that knowledge of previous political experi-
ences was gathered from the historical narratives of other traditions, and in particular the rich
Chinese repository of dynastic histories (Di Cosmo 2010). Surely steppe leaders had access to
the Chinese dynastic histories, and the accounts of nomadic empires preserved in them, through
a series of literate advisors and “intellectuals” familiar with the Chinese sources. At the same
time, we can surmise the existence of a common bedrock of customary practices and accepted
norms that channeled the experience of nomads towards broadly comparable outcomes. Hence,
both shared practices and indirectly transmitted knowledge may account for the family resem-
blance between different steppe empires.
Dissolution
The dissolution of an empire meant that not only the central structure collapsed but also that,
for all practical purposes, the idea of an empire – as conceived and created by that particular
people – collapsed as well. At least until the Mongol conquest whether the notion of an imperial
or “supratribal” structure was going to be revived or restored could not be what determined le-
gitimate rule because there was no abstract notion of an imperial tradition outside of the singular
historical experiences of a given people. While titles that indicated overarching sovereignty
(qaghan, khan) may have been claimed by the leaders of various peoples, there was no single
center in which it could be situated. Only after the Mongol Empire a notion of imperial dignity
tied to the Chinggisid royal house provided a route to imperial sovereignty. As we know, this
was also ineffectual, as the only “imperial nomads” of the post-Yuan period were the Oirats,
the Manchus, and the Zunghars, none of which was or could be regarded as Chinggisid.
A state of dissolution or fragmentation was the normal or “default” condition of nomads be-
cause their economies and societies did not require structure beyond a fairly local level. Under-
standing political culture is again key to making sense of the dissolution of the empire. Politically,
the fall of a nomadic empire was not so different from the dissolution of any other empire. It
stemmed in the last instance from the corrosion of central power and the loss of control over the
resources of the empire. At the same time, the range of specific cases was fairly broad: not two of
the various non-Chinese polities that emerged in the steppes between 220 BCE and 1500 CE dis-
solved in the same way. Generally speaking, the political order of nomads became fragmented
when a single center of power was replaced by a number of centers over which no one could claim
overarching authority, but that were still pegged hierarchically. The balance of power was a shifting
one among weaker and stronger entities. In this newly constituted political landscape each polity
was a combination of communities that may or may not have identified with the dominant lead-
ership, and may have been regarded as a clan, tribe, or other social unit consistent with native ter-
minology, and territorial, in the sense that there was a bounded area over which the polity claimed
authority. Not enough research has been carried out on the nature of these smaller states (tribes?
nations? aristocratic potentates?) to be able to say much about their political nature. At any rate,
their relative power and size is not uniform. Smaller polities were often sustained by local re-
sources, and had trade connections and some military capabilities. When threatened by stronger
ones, they might seek protection from other powers. The case of nomads becoming “subservient”
to Chinese authority, and agreeing to enter a tributary relationship in exchange for resettlement
and military service along the frontier is the classic case of this type of “protection”. Other, stronger
regimes, which may have a relatively large military, economic resources and even a bureaucratically
sophisticated government, may instead pursue a policy of “equal status” diplomacy with both no-
madic and settled regimes and refuse to accept a subordinate role. Each regime had a different
level of militarization, which needs to be assessed case by case, and there are certainly cases in
which they pursue predatory activities as well as diplomatic ones. However, the dissolution of a
nomadic empire does not result in a political vacuum, but in a refashioned political order in which
some old protagonists continue to play a role and new ones emerge. Continuity is detectable in
political terminology, ethnic names, and territorial claims. These may be deceptive to the extent
that it is not known how much of this perceived continuity may be due to conservative practices,
but nonetheless, new realities, even when disguised in old terms, retain a connection with the pre-
vious situation. High mobility and the possibility that entire communities were wiped out in war,
at the same time, raise the question of how radical the post-collapse political order is. If we take
the case of the Xiongnu, we would have to consider different stages of dissolution, including in-
ternal rebellions, civil wars, the role of China, and the transformation of its leadership. The disso-
lution of the second Türk Empire was instead very different, as the rebellions and civil wars were
followed in short succession by a “re-imperialization” at the hands of the Uyghurs.
STANDARD MODES OF ANALYSIS
In this section I will turn to two common ways in which the interactions and relationships of
various peoples and polities along the “Great Wall” has been conceived, and why I believe these
forms of interpretations are problematic, focusing on theories of dependency and co-evolution.
Dependency
Binary models of interaction between China and the steppe have led to the formulation of the-
ories of dependency and co-dependency as well as co-evolution. This approach to the study of
the frontier presupposes the existence of two coherent systems that are reasonably bounded in-
ternally and sufficiently distinct from each other to enter a relationship of mutual dependency
that influences their evolution.
Based on the aforementioned notion that the nomadic world, especially that which was in
close proximity to agricultural settlements, was not self-sufficient and had developed over time
a dependency upon the importation of agricultural products and other goods, the theory of de-
pendency maintains that the aggressive behavior of nomads and the periodic violence unleashed
on peaceful agriculturalists were generated by economic need. The greater the riches to be reaped
by various forms of extortion (plunder, tribute, and the imposition of trade), the more the no-
mads were able to develop larger military machines and “shadow empires” that lived a parasitic
existence on the back of the wealth extracted from their sedentary neighbors (Barfield 1989).
The fundamental fallacy of this theory is that there is no evidence to support its basic premise,
namely, that pastoral economies were not self-sufficient at the subsistence level and required
imports to fulfill basic economic needs. Moreover, functionalist approaches of this type, which
link the development of a very complex military and political establishment to a simple “need”,
are insufficient to explain how these socio-political structures came into being other than by
assuming that various “tribes” rallied around a chief that could deliver what they needed. How-
ever, there is no evidence to support this view. The Xiongnu, Türk, Mongol, and other empires
emerged only after years of bitter intra-nomadic wars, and the level of supratribal, confederate,
or imperial organization was achieved through power struggles internal to the nomadic world
and ideological claims derived from the Inner Asian tradition4. What are the causes of these
inter-nomadic wars? This is the question that any theory must engage in and try to answer based
on available historical and archaeological sources.
An additional problem with dependency theories is that, by linking the rise of nomadic em-
pires to the rise of sedentary empires, they surmise a “synchronicity” between the rise and fall
of nomadic empires and sedentary empires. Yet a cursory examination of the separate chronolo-
gies of “rises and falls” on both sides of the Great Wall shows that no such synchronicity ever
existed (Drompp 2005). The Xiongnu rose to power at the end of the third century BCE in the
middle of a Chinese civil war that destroyed the short-lived imperial unity created by Qin Shi-
huangdi. The northeastern Xianbei came into power in the fourth century CE when China was
divided into southern and northern dynasties, and the north was ruled by short-lived military
regimes of foreign origin. The Türks rose to imperial dignity and expanded into much of Central
Asia in the middle of the sixth century, when there was no semblance of “sedentary empire” in
China. The successor empire, the Uyghur (744–840), was the result of a “change of the guard”
within the Türk Empire and did not coincide with either the rise or the fall of the Tang dynasty.
The success of the Liao in the tenth century, and their founding of a new power in 907, coincided
precisely with the fall of the Tang dynasty. The list goes on: the Jurchen regime became powerful
in their fight against the Liao, which certainly cannot be regarded as a “sedentary empire” and
a weakened Song dynasty. The Mongols built their empire when the north of China was ruled
4
Golden 1982; Di Cosmo 1999a; Biran 2004; Drompp
2005.
by Jurchens and Tanguts, neither of which can be regarded as a sedentary empire, but at best
can be considered hybrid Sino-Inner Asian dynasties. (Surely the Song emperors and statesmen
did not consider either as anything but barbarians.) And finally, can the Manchu conquest of
China be regarded as coinciding with the rise of a powerful Chinese dynasty? In light of these
purely chronological considerations, if we believed in some kind of synchronicity in the lives
of nomadic and sedentary empires, it would be more sensible to seek a correspondence between
the rise of nomadic empires and the fall (or at least deep crisis) of sedentary empires. Since the
evidence against synchronicity applies, by this cursory survey, to all cases of formation of steppe
empires in East Asia, one must conclude that there is simply no basis to maintain that strong
nomadic empires ever correlate with the creation of stable and prosperous Chinese dynasties.
Aside from the dismissal of such synchronicities, however, it is the search itself for binary reg-
ularities that should be refuted because any assumption that the two systems moved in lockstep
constitutes yet another “in-built” bias, according to which processes among nomads depend
exclusively on their relationship with their sedentary neighbors.
Co-evolution
A more “evolved” version of the dependency theory stresses co-evolution and co-dependency
(Turchin 2009). This theory is based on an evolutionary model stating that when societies live
in close “interaction” they develop a degree of dependency (especially economic) upon each
other that generates dynamics of exchange, but also of conflict. They are, therefore, perceived
as two separate and competing systems. If one of them achieves a position of economic or mil-
itary advantage, the other will react and try to achieve a similar or higher position, thereby mo-
bilizing additional resources and transforming itself in the process.
The more interesting of these models, developed by Peter Turchin, has posited the existence
of a long process, possibly over a thousand years, of interaction between the “steppe zone” and
China that mutually stimulated the need for the creation of larger and more powerful polities
(Turchin 2009). This may be regarded as a series of “impact-response” instances through which
nomads in the northern arid zone and agriculturalists in the southern temperate zone gradually
achieved higher levels of social organization and political cohesion by a series of steps leading
towards greater social and political complexity. This thesis rejects simple functionalist models
according to which the nomads suddenly created a higher degree of centralized power in order
to raid China more efficiently, and instead looks at evolutional trajectories over a much longer
period of time.
There is no question, based on archaeological evidence that the peoples to the north of the
Great Wall periodically interacted with their neighbors in the south. Yet there is no evidence
that these communities, which were certainly not purely nomadic, and the southern states and
principalities that formed the Chinese political community, actually influenced each other in
terms of political culture and state institutions. The textual sources, as biased as they may be,
speak, on the contrary, of a widening gap between the Chinese cultural and political community
(by which I mean the Zhou, “Central Plain” or “Hua-Xia” peoples) and the peoples outside it.
More importantly, we cannot identify any element of political or institutional relevance within
the Xiongnu Empire – as the climax of a process parallel to that of the unification of China –
that can be regarded as proof of Chinese influence (Di Cosmo 2011). Hence, if by “co-evolu-
tion” we mean that there was an osmotic or symbiotic environment along the frontier that al-
lowed for the transfer of political ideas enabling ruling elites to create larger and more powerful
polities, such a theory is in my view simply untenable on evidential grounds.
If, on the other hand, by co-evolution we mean mutual pressures and possibly competition
leading to internal developments both within China and the northern communities that re-
warded political expansion and military strengthening, we can find some evidence in wars and
territorial expansion, which are often connected. There is no need to repeat here all the instances
in which Chinese states were engaged in wars with non-Chinese states before the Qin unification
of 221 BCE. In a nutshell, while down to the early eastern Zhou period (ca. 8th–7th centuries
BCE) China was threatened multiple times and sometimes severely defeated by foreign armies
from the northern regions, from approximately the middle of the seventh century BCE onwards
this trend was reversed and Chinese states grew exponentially in territory, administrative
capacity, and military strength, often at the expense of non-Chinese communities. The main
stimulus to such growth did not come from pressures from the north, but rather from internal
competition among Chinese states.
While Chinese states evolved towards more effective administrative and military machines, we
can observe in the north the coming into existence of communities that were no longer threat-
ening China. Evidence of increasing material exchange shows that frontier aristocracies may have
thrived by trading with Chinese states (Di Cosmo 1999b). Towards the end of the Warring States
period, pastoral communities became increasingly important “resources” for the northern Chi-
nese states (Qin and Zhao, and Yan) as their swelling armies required more imports from a pas-
toral economy: horses, cattle, and secondary products (leather, bone, etc.) were needed as military
mounts, pack animals, and in the manufacture of military equipment (cuirasses, arrows, bows,
and cross-bows). It was China, where armies counted hundreds of thousands of soldiers, that
had the greater need for the products of their neighbors in the steppe, but while the Chinese
states grew in size and military might, no parallel evolution can be registered in the steppe.
What should also be questioned is whether the frontier was itself the place where the most
powerful nomadic polities were located over the many centuries of “co-evolution”. The archae-
ological evidence rather shows that the emergence of the most characteristic of the “Scythian”
cultures, Karasuk and Tagar, long before the appearance of the Xiongnu Empire took place far-
away from any Chinese frontier (Legrand/Bokovenko 2006). The Altai and Tuva regions that
are home to the Arzhan burials (ca. 8th and 6th century BCE) and the Pazyryk culture (5th–
3rd centuries BCE) fulfill several requirements as a possible focus for the genesis of a nomadic
state formation (Parzinger 2006, 586–631; Francfort et al. 2000). There are no written sources
for Pazyryk, but the monumentality of the burial architecture, its long-term occupancy, and
the long distance relations of its elite point to the possible existence of rich, powerful, politically
sophisticated communities5. While this remains a matter of speculation, it is still legitimate to
ask whether the Pazyryk people may have carried a political culture conducive to supratribal
or expanded chiefdoms, or even early states. If so, the nomadic communities to the north of
China may have evolved politically not just in relation to China, but also to those so-called
Scytho-Siberian communities in the Altai-Yenisei-Tuva region. Interestingly, some of the foun-
dational features of the Xiongnu state, such as the decimal system of their military hierarchy,
find their earliest precedents not in the Sinitic but in the Achaemenid world (Di Cosmo 2011).
Whether the Xiongnu and the Pazyryk people were in mutual contact in the third century BCE
5
Rudenko 1970; Grjaznov 1969; 1984; Polosmak 1996;
Chugunov et al. 2001.
requires further exploration, but linguistic conjectures about the affinity between the Xiongnu
language and the Ket language of Siberia have already shown one degree of association (Vovin
2000; 2003), and if genetic and other data point to other levels of connectivity it would be im-
possible not to regard the “deep” steppe as a region involved in the evolution of political forms
found along the arc of the Inner Asian frontiers, including Central Asia, Mongolia, south Siberia,
and the Tarim Basin6. Likewise, the Rouzhi (often referred to as Yuezhi), which the Chinese
sources describe as a powerful group located north of the Tarim Basin, and the nomadic Wusun
people who inhabited the region to the north of the Tianshan Mountains are likely candidates
for the existence of large nomadic chiefdoms to the northwest of China prior to the creation of
a Xiongnu Empire (Di Cosmo 2000). How these groups and cultures participated in the evolu-
tion of nomadic empires and emergence of the Xiongnu is not at all clear, but it is certainly a
reasonable hypothesis that nomadic formations far away from China influenced the Xiongnu
supratribal and imperial architecture.
Even without getting into the labyrinthic details of the ethnic or linguistic ascription of these
groups (some of which were surely closer to the Iranian and Central Asian nomads than to those
in Mongolia and northern China), there are reasons to believe that the evolution of a nomadic
“steppe” political culture includes a much larger temporal and spatial range, whereby western
and northern Asian influences may indeed have played an even greater role than the Chinese
cultural and political sphere in the formation of nomadic polities on the “Great Wall” frontier.
RE-FRAMING THE QUESTION
The critical assessment of dependency and co-evolutionary theses opens the door to alternative
approaches, which will have historical validity only if they can find sufficient corroboration in
the evidence available to us, rather than in abstract models. Based on a broad reading of the
sources, I will attempt to reframe the question of the formation of nomadic empires by focusing
on three aspects: context, constants, and process. Context refers to the specific circumstances
reported in the historical texts. Constants refer to recurrent aspects of the formation of nomadic
empires, identified here as expansion, displacement, and hybridity. Process refers mainly to the
political tools adopted to confront and overcome contingent historical situations, but it also
refers to shared values, modes of decision-making, and interaction with other societies, and to
an even broader discussion militarization and sovereignty. These three aspects allow us to discern
much more precisely the similarities and differences between different empires, and to ground
them historically in their time and place.
Context
In the genesis of an empire, “context” refers to the sequence of events that transforms the ex-
isting political order and creates a new one. As mentioned above, these transformative situations,
out of which new leaders emerged and new regimes and even empires were created, have been
6
Kozintsev 2008; Keyser et al. 2009; Li et al. 2010.
understood as part of nomadic life’s natural cycles. What Ellsworth Huntington called “the
pulse of Asia” (Huntington 1907) referring to climate and human interaction in the Inner Asian
world, has frequently been seen as an apt metaphor of the macrohistory of nomads. As men-
tioned above, the cyclical model has diverted attention from the social and political mechanisms
that were critical to the formation of steppe polities. Contextualizing the relationship between
nomads and agriculturalists means, rather, putting history back into the discussion. Models
should not be avoided but should also not be artificially restricted, and must account for his-
torical variation in order to claim validity. The strategies adopted by “empires” along the north-
ern frontier of China are significantly different across time not just because China learned how
to deal with nomads, or because nomads learned how to deal with China, but because circum-
stances, objectives, and means were different. New political instruments were created or em-
ployed based on disparate historical circumstances. Using therefore “contingencies” as a way
to destabilize cyclical, recurrent, or “natural” views of nomads helps us understand the political
life of nomads as they appear or disappear from the historical sources (Rogers 2007).
If we take as examples the germinal phases of the Xiongnu, Xianbei, and Türk empires (or any
other large nomadic state), we are confronted with dramatically different situations. In 215 BCE,
as the sources make amply clear, the Xiongnu were facing an invasion of unprecedented pro-
portions by the Qin army, which was also followed by colonists dispatched to settle in the new
lands. This was the expansionist drive of an imperial unified and massively militarized China
that, to an extent stimulated by a desire to eliminate potential threats, but more likely under
pressure to relocate demobilized troops, continued to encroach upon pastoral lands. The emer-
gence of the Xianbei and the establishment of the Northern Wei dynasty, on the contrary, fol-
lowed the collapse of the Han dynasty, the disintegration of central power during the Three
Kingdoms, and the establishment of “barbarian” regimes in northern China. The emergence of
a northeastern power that largely unified northern China, and began a process of cultural and
political self-hybridization, is entirely different from the Xiongnu case. The Türk case presents
yet a different picture, as the common story speaks to a political environment in which the
Rouran and the Western Wei dynasty – a short-lived dynasty (535–556) that fell a few years
after the Türks came to power – dominated the political space through a complex network of
political alliances. The Türks were an important element in this political web and took advantage
of a favorable situation which allowed them to become a powerful military force.
Surely the facts reported in the Chinese sources can be misrepresented and thus misleading,
but the general picture, as out of focus as it may be, unquestionably shows political scenarios
that are hardly comparable. A deliberate emphasis on the contingencies of the rise of a nomadic
empire should help demystify the notion according to which, no matter how weak or powerful,
authentically Chinese or “Sinicized”, it was “Chinese dynasties” that provided in the last in-
stance the catalyst for the formation of nomadic states, thus relegating any development internal
to the nomadic world to an epiphenomenon of scarce relevance. For instance, the assumption
that entertaining diplomatic relations with China (the Türks had an exchange of envoys with
the Western Wei dynasty) ipso facto propelled a Chinese (or in this case pseudo-Chinese) dynasty
to center stage in the politogenesis of the Türks surely overreaches the significance of the evi-
dence. The relevant chapters in the Chinese dynastic histories show that the political crisis within
the Rouran kingdom in the early sixth century and the struggle against the nomadic Tiele people
were the immediate causes of the rise of the Türks.
A cursory examination of the early Han conflict with the Xiongnu shows the deployment of
both military and diplomatic instruments in which relations with China cannot be separated from
the political events taking place in the steppe region as a whole. The Han frontier strategy was based
on principles and ideas that were forged ex novo as they were needed to address an entirely new
political configuration. Once the attempt to destroy the Xiongnu in the early years of the Han dy-
nasty failed, there was no alternative but to resort to diplomatic means in order to avoid the de-
struction of China as a unified polity. Since the preservation of the unity of the empire was the main
objective of the Chinese leadership, it had to accept the following realities: (1) for the first time in
a long time (possibly ever) a regular Chinese army had been routed by a nomadic army; (2) the
north had achieved an unprecedented level of political and military unity, and could therefore speak
to China as an empire of equal dignity; (3) the Han dynasty had to reckon with internal dissent,
and provincial leaders (called wang, that is, kings or princes) continued to present seditious threats
that limited its foreign policy options. As we know, this state of affairs forced the Han to retreat
and resort to diplomatic means, accepting an obviously subaltern and humiliating “tributary” po-
sition. It was on the other side of the Great Wall, however, that the Xiongnu were truly expanding,
to the point that they united all the people who “lived by drawing the bow”. The consolidation of
the power of the imperial founder Maodun (or Modu) had taken place after several years of inter-
nomadic fighting resulting in the subjugation, submission, or flight of several enemies and the es-
tablishment of an unprecedented territorial expansion (Di Cosmo 2002, 161–205).
The example of the Xiongnu Empire, while unique in its own way, is paradigmatic in one re-
spect, namely that the expansionist drive of this empire placed an unprecedented pressure not
only on the Chinese frontier but throughout the steppe region. We shall see below that this is a
“constant” in the establishment of a nomadic empire, and the reason for it has to be sought in
the nature of the state-building process itself: the birth of a nomadic empire is accompanied by
a fierce need to consume resources. However, not all empires consume or procure such resources
in the same way. Establishing the “context” means determining what opportunities were avail-
able to the nomadic leadership and how these determined its political and military conduct. The
Xiongnu conquered their non-Chinese enemies, forced them to provide various kinds of tribute,
and then turned against China, with which they had thus far had a mixed, but basically defensive
posture. This they were able to do only because they had acquired a monopolistic dominion of
the steppe resources in addition to the tribute that could be extracted from China and redistrib-
uted strategically.
Constants
Three aspects of the formation of nomadic empires appear as constants in the sources, and are
critical to their existence. These are, first, the aforementioned expansionism following the for-
mation of any centralized power; second, the displacement effect on other nomads, some of
whom were incorporated while others were pushed into various directions; and third, the hy-
bridization of the imperial institutions that unfailingly followed the establishment of a strong
central power. By hybridization I mean a transformation of the original (pre-conquest) structure
of government by the incorporation of other institutions from conquered peoples and states.
One can also find other similarities and a few analogies in comparing nomadic empires, but the
three aspects mentioned above seem to me the most important in so far as they assisted the gen-
esis of the various imperial forms that are historically attested.
By expansionism I mean the sudden impulse that, as soon as a steppe empire has been con-
stituted around a central leader, projects the nomads beyond their own ecological boundaries
and into foreign lands. This phenomenon can be observed in every single instance of imperial
formation. Expansionism is not a natural condition of nomads, that is, something that nomads
do because they have horses and superior military skills. Expansionism is a direct function of
the need to procure the resources necessary to maintain the newly created polity. These needs
(not the general needs of nomadic societies) are in excess of the productive capacity of their own
economy. Hence, it is possible that the nomads’ expansion outside their normal habitats and
the conquest of territories far removed from their homeland were due to an initial impulse to
balance the differential between economic productivity and the resources needed to support the
politico-military structure that emerged after a period of intense fighting, lasting several years
and sometime decades.
An important corollary of this hypothesis is that economic needs are relative to the size of
the court and army that the unifying process creates. Because a given nomadic state or empire
emerged out of a period of enormous political instability, those societies that must bear the
brunt of the assault faced an extremely “hungry” and aggressive machine. Both the Xiongnu
and the Türks expanded in every direction that was convenient to them and primarily along the
Eurasian steppe belt, gobbling up local peoples, imposing tribute, and taxing trade. In relation
to China, which was far more populous than the steppe and required more sophisticated ad-
ministrative skills, the early nomadic empires established a different relationship, consisting of
requests for tribute. Such extraordinary appropriations, appearing as they do in conjunction
with a centralized political structure, indicate that extractive strategies were dictated by the need
to support the new state, not nomadic society as a whole.
If there is any regularity in the formation of nomadic empires, it is the difficulty in balancing
the needs of the state and the production of resources. The main challenge for the new leaders
was finding an equilibrium between the natural growth of the state apparatus and the need to
procure sufficient resources. When such a balance could not be found, an accelerating and cen-
trifugal vicious circle would set in, threatening to unhinge the command structure. Successful
nomadic leaders recognized the necessity to limit the state apparatus’ growth and expansion
and acted in that direction.
The discussion of the necessity to expand leads us to our second “constant”, that is, the effects
of nomadic imperialism on a whole host of other peoples, not just China. The Xiongnu, as we
know, had a decisive role in pushing the Rouzhi into Central Asia, and so did, probably, the
Türks with the Avars, although the picture remains extremely complex (Czeglédy 1983). This
does not mean that migrations could not have occurred at the same time, but nomadic expan-
sionism caused greater displacement and may have accelerated pre-existing trends. The demo-
graphic movements that we see at certain times in Asian history, which are sometimes correlated
with climatic trends (Cook 2013) may therefore be caused by the creation of a strong nomadic
empire even at considerable distance from the place where a “new people” suddenly appears.
How to link events taking place at great distances is a classic problem of steppe history. Older
scholars who theorized a set of correspondences between events taking place in China and Eu-
rope, such as Frederick Teggart (1939), thought in terms of correlations, which resemble a tennis
game in which the impulse to movement was given by the two civilizations at the opposite ends
of Eurasia, with the peoples in the middle being thrown in one direction or another. If we simply
invert this logic and assume that the mechanisms behind steppe history are primarily located in
steppe history itself, we are likely to find that a number of events involving steppe relations
with China, Rome, and Iran can ultimately be traced back to remote steppe regions, far removed
from the respective frontier zones. Future archaeological research, as well as new data relative
to climate, economic production, and technology, by providing a clearer picture of internal

steppe dynamics, may shed further light on what is so far a matter of conjecture.
Be that as it may, a number of documented cases already show that nomadic empires could
and did cause continent-wide demographic transformations by setting in motion entire popu-
lations. Whether these movements can be registered as simple migratory phenomena can be,
however, misleading. Not every member of a given people migrated. Some surrendered to the
expanding “imperial nomads”, others were enslaved, and others were absorbed politically while
retaining their autonomy. Thus, and here is our third “constant”, nomadic empires necessarily
acquire a “hybrid” nature as a necessary result of the process of their political expansion. Each
one of them, as far as we can tell, included a collection of different peoples, lands and languages.
Scholars generally agree on the ethnically and linguistically mixed nature of nomadic empires,
although questions related to ethnic identity remain elusive. At present our understanding of
nomadic empires in relation to their ethnic components is simply insufficient to grasp the nature
of the relationship between the different groups and how identities, power, and hierarchies were
negotiated. It is especially difficult to draw a clear demarcation line between an “inside” – that
is, the political core – and an “outside” – that is, marginal and subordinate groups. The command
structure, by its own nature expansive and open to the incorporation of external elements, ap-
pears at the same time more exclusive at the summit, where the imperial clans remained firmly
in control of the highest positions. The “composite” nature of the elites in nomadic empires is
a clear result of the hybrid nature of its constituencies, and an integral part of its political culture.
All Inner Asian empires that emerged along the Great Wall display such features, although the
formative process changed according to contingent challenges and preexisting conditions specific
to the peoples and time in question.
Process
The next question regards some aspects of the process of state formation. Among them the mil-
itarization of society, or at any rate an increase in the size of armies and military activities, is
uncontested as a critical phase in the formation of new political and social institutions. We shall
not enter here the entangled and much debated problem of the presumed transition from a
“tribal” to an “imperial” condition because both forms – “tribe” and “empire” – are to a degree
irrelevant to the process itself, which instead hinges on how new institutions came into being.
There is general agreement on the fact that steppe imperial institutions were, at least initially,
all military in nature, since the steppe empire can only be formed by military means (Vasjutin
2003). The new armies, which are no longer bands of tribesmen but complex military machines
of tens of thousands of people, became the laboratory in which new institutions were born.
These institutions depended, at least to a degree, on the type of army that was created. The so-
lutions adopted, while based on preexisting political traditions, are never truly bound by them.
Customary laws were transformed into codified norms introduced on an ad hoc basis in the
form of edicts issued by the khan. Such decrees were meant to create a body of laws and regu-
lations that could overcome the limitations of customary norms, complementing and sometimes
replacing them, and thus suit the needs of a much expanded government and population.
Who was able to issue laws? This question cannot be answered without discussing the larger
issue of the khan’s sovereignty. Since the right to rule depended on personal charisma, sover-
eignty was not easily transacted from one khan to the next, and succession presented complex
challenges that threatened the stability of the empire. Certainly there was no fixed value for
“sovereignty” in the Inner Asian world. Local aristocracies had authority within their own con-
stituencies but rarely any power to enforce their will over an external group other than by force.
In an imperial setting, however, the powers ideally associated with sovereignty can be summa-
rized in three points: the authority to issue laws, the authority to represent the whole political
community in diplomatic and international relations, and the authority to raise taxes and draft
soldiers. The “enforceability” of these powers was brittle at best and required a measure of con-
sensus from subordinate members of the aristocracy. Typically, the khan’s legitimacy to rule
was at its zenith (that is, virtually uncontested) during and immediately after the stages of im-
perial consolidation and expansion, and tended to wane thereafter.
It was clearly a major obstacle for any would-be khan that sovereignty could not be defined
in institutional terms but was rather understood as a personal attribute. The differential between
institutional and personal sovereignty always created political problems in the relations between
steppe polities and those sedentary empires that had developed an institutional definition of
sovereignty. Moreover, the Inner Asian sovereign had to mediate between many interest groups
within its own community and negotiate his position by force or by other means, such as fair
distribution of resources, fair handling of judicial matters and disputes, correct delivery of rituals
and religious ceremonies, and especially excellent military leadership and shrewd foreign pol-
icy.
But how does the process of acquiring the status of charismatic leader work? As we have
seen, the intense warfare that precedes the creation of a nomadic empire evidently indicates
something different from a peaceful election or consensual recognition. The ideological claim
to rule is contested politically, and is based on a deceptively simple logic that can only be ap-
preciated in its actual depth once we examine it closely. According to this logic, victory in battle,
invoked as a sign of divine support and divinely received fortune, was presented as the major
“selling point” of a khan-to-be’s sovereign claim. The overall argument held that everyone
should submit to and support the leader once he has been “revealed” by God as a favorite
through victory in battle. Legitimacy based on revelation through military exploits was accrued
throughout the process of intra-nomadic warfare that always preceded the formation of a large
union, and continued once the newly built imperial formation confronted larger states. Defeat
in battle, on the other hand, automatically increased internal tensions because the leader could
no longer be seen as favored by Heaven, and therefore his sovereign power declined.
Herein lies the fundamental difference between the Chinese and Inner Asian concepts of sov-
ereignty. The Chinese doctrine of the Mandate of Heaven contains a similar prescription that
connects the position of the emperor with a divine support to rule, but it is extremely unlikely
that a challenge to the emperor could be directly tied to poor personal performance in military
affairs. The mandate could certainly be lost, and personal performance did count, but it was
normally linked to a dynastic collapse that could be attributed to multiple causes, including fac-
tional strife, bureaucratic inefficiencies, and natural catastrophes. On that basis a new claimant
could invoke the Mandate of Heaven in an attempt to topple the current dynasty. However,
plenty of ineffective or inept Chinese emperors survived their personal deficits without being
challenged, while rather capable emperors succumbed because the crises they faced could not
be overcome. In Inner Asian contexts the sovereign powers of the khan, as they were more
closely linked to his personal achievements, were subject to constant scrutiny and therefore re-
quired frequent confirmation. Several Inner Asian institutions, from the comitatus to the quriltai
(political assembly) but also, probably, the royal hunt, show the importance of political partic-
ipation of the upper elite in confirming or reconfirming the sovereign as the legitimate holder
of the “mandate” to rule based on the notion that he enjoyed divine fortune. It was essential,
however, that such divine fortune (there are several terms in Altaic political languages to express
this concept) be revealed in order for it to retain its potency.
Here we understand, therefore, how the vagaries of war can make a political unifier weak or
strong based on the “wattage” of the revelation, that is, on the greatness of his military exploits.
The autochthonous monuments that have reached us, of which the Orkhon inscriptions are a
prime example, can thus be seen as both political and religious documents, because the chronicle
of the feats of the kings are not just meant to establish a memory and a political claim but to
preserve the “revelation” of the good fortune of the king essential to the establishment of
charisma and of a sovereign claim. The implication that these records carry, therefore, is to pre-
serve (we could also say “store”) the accumulated charisma for the future generations.
As already noticed by Joseph Fletcher, a characteristic aspect of succession in the Altaic po-
litical world was what he called, from the Celtic ritual, “bloody tanistry”, that is, a lethal struggle
among all possible claimants once the throne became vacant, through which the political system
ensured that the most gifted would prevail (Fletcher 1979–1980). However, what gives cogency
to this concept is not so much the notion of talent but rather that of “fortune” (divine support)
without which even the most talented leader could not succeed. In the case of the Xiongnu the
title itself of the first Chanyu (king, emperor) indicates exactly the same concept: the sovereign
was to enjoy his paramount position because he was “appointed” (or chosen) by Heaven.
The khan’s charisma, according to this interpretation, was derived from the “revelation” of
divine power in the conduct of war and in the forms in which this was advertised. However,
the rituals, meetings, and other “ideological” forms that are normally understood as ways to
make the power of the khan “legitimate” were in fact ways to store and renew the charisma, to
harness the fortune that the leader was supposed to have received by recognizing his role as the
political and religious center of the community. In this light, the often recognized question of
the “sacred” territory, and of a space that is very closely associated with the power of the khan,
has the same function of harnessing in one locality powers that are supposed to be directly con-
nected to a “revealed” divine will. Thomas Allsen has discussed the question of the sacred places
occupied by Mongol empire-builders to appropriate their immanent powers and thus acquire
legitimacy, pointing out the connection between divine fortune, sacral places, and charisma
(Allsen 1996). This connection could be further developed in two directions. The charisma of
the leader is certainly connected to divine fortune, but the question of “revelation” through mil-
itary victory has to be brought into the equation. Secondly, the logical progression towards
charismatic leadership (once we understand it as a process), depends on how quickly one can
garner enough support to make the appropriation of sacred spaces and the ritual practices asso-
ciated with them politically effective and ideologically meaningful. It is conceivable that such
rituals and places are meant to “reify” the charisma and store it in a way that the power it pro-
vides can be transferred to descendants and successors. The disembodiment of these powers
from the person himself and their placement in geographical or religious settings has the further
purpose of separating sovereignty and charisma, so that the imperial founder’s descendants could
retain the original sovereignty and political authority even when endowed with less evident per-
sonal qualities. If the revelation of power could be located in an ancestral myth, a sacred moun-
tain or a set of rituals, then the person who could be accepted as the custodian of these
repositories could also exercise sovereign power without having to regain charisma “the hard
way” by bloody tanistry. But this type of power was inevitably subject to erosion.
Seen in this light, the long-debated question of “legitimacy” in the steppe and especially the
process of legitimation of a given sovereign appears less ideological and more political. If sover-
eignty lies not in power itself, but in the revelation of charisma through victory in battle and its
storage in a number of religious-ideological “containers” that the sovereign controls, then it is
possible to continue to hold together the political community as long as these “containers” con-
tinue to perform their talismanic duties. This is why, possibly, the fall of ancient nomads’ imperial
power was accompanied so often by the desecration of the ancestral tombs by their enemies.
CONCLUSION
Neither the spatial nor the temporal dimension of nomadic empires can be reduced to static,
unchanging, fixed models. One consideration that has been tentatively proposed is that the mo-
bility of people that suddenly appear or disappear from the sources has specific political causes,
namely the re-territorialization and expansionist drives of nomadic polities. Steppe leaders al-
ways acted within a dense political environment, in which they needed to keep together their
people, make alliances, organize for defense, and maintain their resources. Conceiving mobility
as a primarily political phenomenon allows us to focus on the effects of the “barbarian invasions”
registered at both ends of Eurasia as, in essence, a by-product of several “re-makings” of the
political order of the Inner Asian world. This is of course only a hypothesis at this stage, but
looking at the set of correspondences and correlations already noticed a long time ago by Teggart
(1939), Altheim (1959–62), and Maenchen-Helfen (1973) among others, the period of the “Hun-
nic” presence in Central Asia appears in a different light. This does not mean that we should re-
visit the stale question of Xiongnu-Hun identity, but that we should look at the space between
Kaifeng and Byzantium as one in which a new world order was being created and contested,
and the effects of this process were felt on all frontiers.
Focusing solely on discrete frontiers cannot provide a solution to understanding the forces
and sheer energy emanating from the Inner Asian world that impacted both China and Europe
in unprecedented ways. The power vacuum after the fall of the Han cannot by itself explain the
political resurgence of the nomadic world. The possibilities opened by this perspective are ob-
vious: the integrated study of Central Asia, northern China, and the eastern Roman Empire is
key to understanding the formation of new worlds both in China and in Europe.
Secondly, the interaction of Inner Asian polities with sedentary states cannot be assumed to
have been the sole or even primary cause of Inner Asian imperial formations, but rather the
consequence of the deployment of more sophisticated political tools within the Inner Asian
world. The “historicization” of Inner Asian peoples and the empires they created involves sev-
eral elements: greater ability to incorporate more ethnic groups under a single political umbrella,
greater ability to reap resources from multiple sources, and finally more successful effort to de-
velop state institutions that would later become staples of Inner Asian political culture. While
more research is needed, we can hypothesize that experiences such as that of the Tuoba Wei (Xi-
anbei) polity in northern China were extremely important in several respects: the incorporation
of foreign religions in the ruling ideology, a certain degree of urbanization, and the development
of hybrid administrative structures. While in mainstream scholarship these and other aspects of
Northern Wei politics are attributed to a process of “Sinicization”, we find similar developments
in other Inner Asian polities, such as those established by Khitans, and Jurchen. Moving away
from static models and towards a dynamic history that tracks the evolution of a political culture
widely shared among “steppe peoples” and pays particular attention to the contexts and con-
tingencies are the necessary premises upon which the “steppe perspective” can provide a new
framework for continental Eurasian history.
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COMPLEXITY OF INTERACTION
ALONG THE EURASIAN STEPPE ZONE
IN THE FIRST MILLENNIUM CE
Bonn Contributions to Asian Archaeology
Volume 7
Edited by
Jan Bemmann
COMPLEXITY OF INTER ACTION
ALONG THE EURASIAN STEPPE ZONE
IN THE FIRST MILLENNIUM CE
Edited by
Jan Bemmann, Michael Schmauder
2015
Vor- und Frühgeschichtliche Archäologie
Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn
708 pages, 176 figures, 12 tables
The conference and the publication were generously financed by

Gerda Henkel Stiftung
Landschaftsverband Rheinland mit LVR-Landesmuseum Bonn
The conference was co-organized and the book is co-edited by

Ursula Brosseder, Susanne Reichert, and Timo Stickler
Ein Titelsatz ist bei der Deutschen Bibliothek erhältlich

(http://www.ddb.de)
Desktop Publishing and Design: Matthias Weis

Translations: Authors, Daniel C. Waugh
English language editors: Alicia Ventresca Miller, Susanne Reichert
Image editing: Gisela Höhn, Matthias Weis
Final editing: Ute Arents, Güde Bemmann
Printing and binding:
DDD DigitalDruck Deutschland GmbH & Co. KG – Aalen
Printed in Germany
Cover illustration: Martin Pütz
ISBN 978-3-936490-14-7
Copyright 2015 by vfgarch.press uni-bonn
CONTENTS
PREFACE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
NOMADIC EMPIRES – MODES OF ANALYSIS
NIKOLAI N. KRADIN
Nomadic Empires in Inner Asia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
NICOLA DI COSMO
China-Steppe Relations in Historical Perspective. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
J. DANIEL ROGERS
Empire Dynamics and Inner Asia. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
CLAUDIO CIOFFI-REVILLA, WILLIAM HONEYCHURCH, J. DANIEL ROGERS

MASON Hierarchies: A Long-range Agent Model of Power, Conflict, and
Environment in Inner Asia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
PAVEL E. TARASOV, MAYKE WAGNER

Environmental Aspects of Chinese Antiquity: Problems of
Interpretation and Chronological Correlation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
XIONGNU, THE HAN EMPIRE, AND THE ORIENTAL KOINE
BRYAN K. MILLER
The Southern Xiongnu in Northern China: Navigating and Negotiating
the Middle Ground . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
URSULA B. BROSSEDER
A Study on the Complexity and Dynamics of Interaction and Exchange in
Late Iron Age Eurasia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
MAREK JAN OLBRYCHT

Arsacid Iran and the Nomads of Central Asia – Ways of Cultural Transfer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 333
INNER AND CENTRAL ASIA FROM THE TÜRKS TO THE MONGOLS
SERGEY A. VASYUTIN
The Model of the Political Transformation of the Da Liao as an Alternative
to the Evolution of the Structures of Authority in the Early Medieval Pastoral Empires
of Mongolia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 391
6
MICHAEL R. DROMPP
Strategies of Cohesion and Control in the Türk and Uyghur Empires. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 437
ÉTIENNE DE LA VAISSIÈRE
Away from the Ötüken: A Geopolitical Approach to the seventh Century
Eastern Türks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 453
SÖREN STARK
Luxurious Necessities: Some Observations on Foreign Commodities and Nomadic
Polities in Central Asia in the sixth to ninth Centuries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 463
PETER B. GOLDEN
The Turkic World in Maḥmûd al-Kâshgharî . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 503
THOMAS O. HÖLLMANN
On the Road again – Diplomacy and Trade from a Chinese Perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 557
MICHAL BIRAN
The Qarakhanids’ Eastern Exchange: Preliminary Notes on the Silk Roads
in the eleventh and twelfth Centuries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 575
JÜRGEN PAUL
Forces and Resources. Remarks on the Failing Regional State of
Sulṭānšāh b. Il Arslan Ḫwārazmšāh. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 597
TATIANA SKRYNNIKOVA
Old-Turkish Roots of Chinggis Khan’s “Golden Clan”. Continuity of
Genesis. Typology of Power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 623
NOMADIC INTERACTION WITH THE ROMAN AND BYZANTINE WEST
MISCHA MEIER
Dealing with Non-State Societies: The failed Assassination Attempt against
Attila (449 CE) and Eastern Roman Hunnic Policy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 635
TIMO STICKLER
The Gupta Empire in the Face of the Hunnic Threat. Parallels to the
Late Roman Empire? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 659
MICHAEL SCHMAUDER
Huns, Avars, Hungarians – Reflections on the Interaction between Steppe Empires
in Southeast Europe and the Late Roman to Early Byzantine Empires . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 671
WALTER POHL
Huns, Avars, Hungarians – Comparative Perspectives based on Written Evidence . . . . . . . . . 693
INDEX OF AUTHORS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 703

PREFACE
This volume combines contributions to a conference of the same title which was held February
9 to 11, 2012, in Bonn. Idea and format of the meeting had been developed through a process
of intensive discussions among the editors in close cooperation with Dieter Quast, RGZM
Mainz. Our original intention was to organize a conference with a focus on archaeology, bearing
in mind questions concerning mobility and communication or – stated differently – exchange
patterns in Eurasia. After having recognized that research in Eurasia is still dominated by site
centric approaches which makes vast overviews as we imagined them somewhat cumbersome
we deviated from our first outline.
As a consequence, we broadened the field for two further aspects which had been nearly neg-
lected thus far. First, there are West–East ranging communications in the Eurasian steppe zone
which lie beyond the overarching term “Silk Roads”. As written sources rarely throw light on
interactions among steppe polities, these interactions are markedly less frequently subject to
scientific discussions. This question is best approached via archaeological analyses with a wide
focus in geographical terms. North–South contacts are by far more commonly discussed than
West–East communications, as they encompass interactions between states with foremost seden-
tary population and nomads who live north of these territories. As a rule, it is the sedentary
viewpoint which is being told, as these cultures opposed to the nomads left numerous written
accounts1. At the same time we wanted to encourage comparative perspectives. Characteristics
often assumed to be typical of the relations between sedentary people and nomads are also true
in comparable measures of those between Rome/Byzantium and their “barbaric” neighbors.
What they all have in common is at least a distinct mobility in space, even though to varying
forms and degrees. Furthermore, questions and themes long discussed in European archaeology
and history entered the research of Inner Asia and Central Asia only recently, as, for example,
identity, the emergence of new ethnic groups, frontiers, frontier societies, contact zones, elites,
economies of prestige goods. We therefore wanted to invite colleagues of different disciplines
and regions to join in a scientific dispute. Lively discussions during the conference and positive
feedback by attendees show that this idea was appreciated.
The second aspect to be included can be summarized under the term “complexity”, which in
this context should not be understood as a concept from the social sciences but metaphorically.
Over long periods of time simple explanations of cultural phenomena were favored, be it state-
ments on pure and poor nomads, the dependency theory or the bad habit of explaining every
cultural change with large-scale migrations. “Complexity” is meant as a signal and reminder
that the simplest explanations are not always the best, which is reflected by the contributions in
this volume.
1
Numerous projects within the framework of the Col- nomads and settled people, a good overview of publi-
laborative Research Center (Sonderforschungsbereich) cations thus far is given by the center’s website
586 “Difference and Integration” at the University http://nomadsed.de/home/.
Leipzig and the Martin-Luther University Halle-Wit-
tenberg dealt intensively with interactions between
8 P REFACE
We consciously limited the temporal scope of the papers to the time after the Scyths and be-
fore the Mongols, somewhat clumsily described as the “first millennium CE”, because these
two eras have been traditionally paid enormous attention to and are represented in a correspon-
ding flood of publications2. At the same time interactions in the steppe zone witnessed only
during the centuries around the turn of the era a hitherto unknown rise in intensity and dy-
namics.
Not all of the works presented at the conference are included in this volume as they were al-
ready noted for publications elsewhere. This applies to the presentations given by Enno Giele,
Valentina Mordvintseva, and Matthias Pfisterer. However, other colleagues who could not attend
the conference were invited to hand in manuscripts. All contributions were revised and partly
expanded, which to our delight resulted in this comprehensive volume. We would have loved
to have included a paper on the consequences of climate change and meteorological events on
the polities of the Eurasian steppe as such conditions win more and more popularity as explanans
of significant changes3, but it did not work out. To our dismay and because of different reasons
the western steppes and Central Asia are less represented than we wished for.
We subdivided the contributions into four parts: “Nomadic Empires – Modes of Analysis”
encompasses highly different approaches to interpretations and analyses of nomadic empires,
ranging from computational agent-based models, over anthropological to historical methodol-
ogy. Better than any perfect introduction this multi-facetted research shows how exciting it is
to deal with this area much neglected in World History. Although the section “Xiongnu, the
Han Empire and the Oriental Koine” assembles merely three contributions, it covers more than
260 pages. If nothing else, this certainly echoes the boom of Xiongnu archaeology of the past
decades. By taking into account enormous amounts of archaeological, art historical, and written
sources the authors surmount traditional and often too static schemes of interpretation. These
new analyses detect an astonishing variety of interactions during the centuries around the turn
of the era, which broadens our understanding of this epoch and provides new avenues for other
regions and periods at the same time. In the third section, “Inner and Central Asia from the
Türks to the Mongols”, nine contributions exemplify a multicolored and almost continuously
changing picture of languages, ethnicities, and political affinities for Inner and Central Asia from
the sixth to the twelfth centuries. Political affinities, however, were changing so quickly due to
situational demands as to almost refute all efforts to retrace them within the archaeological
record. Decision makers were astonishingly well informed about even distant regions and they
acted accordingly over vast distances. The studies at hand analyze exchange processes on varying
2
See for the Scyths for example W. Menghin/H. Par- for the Mongol period Dschingis Khan und seine
zinger/A. Nagler/M. Nawroth (eds.), Im Zeichen des Erben. Das Weltreich der Mongolen (2005); W. W.
goldenen Greifen. Königsgräber der Skythen. Begleit- Fitzhugh/M. Rossabi/W. Honeychurch (eds.), Genghis
band zur gleichnamigen Ausstellung: Berlin, Martin- Khan and the Mongol Empire (Seattle 2009); see also
Gropius-Bau, 6. Juli – 1. Oktober 2007; München, the website of the European Research Council Grant
Kunsthalle der Hypo-Kulturstiftung, 26. Oktober “Mobility, Empire and Cross Cultural Contacts in
2007 – 20. Januar 2008; Hamburg, Museum für Kunst Mongol Eurasia” http://mongol.huji.ac.il/, which pro-
und Gewerbe Hamburg, 15. Februar – 25. Mai 2008 vides an extensive bibliography.
3
(München, Berlin 2007); H. Parzinger, Die Skythen. N. Pederson/A. Hessl/N. Baatarbileg/K. Anchukaitis/
3rd ed. (München 2009); J. Aruz (ed.), The Golden N. Di Cosmo, Pluvials, Droughts, the Mongol Empire,
Deer of Eurasia: Scythian and Sarmatian Treasures and Modern Mongolia. Proceedings of the National
from the Russian Steppes (New York, New Haven Academy of Sciences 111, 2014, 4375–4379; J. Fei/
2000); J. Aruz/A. Farkas/A. Alekseev/E. Korolkova J. Zhou/Y. Hou, Circa A.D. 626 Volcanic Eruption,
(eds.), The Golden Deer of Eurasia. Perspectives on the Climatic Cooling, and the Collapse of the Eastern Tur-
Steppe Nomads of the Ancient World. The Metropol- kic Empire. Climatic Change 81, 2007, 469–475.
itan Museum of Art Symposia (New Haven 2006). See
P REFACE 9
levels – from language to embassies – as well as aspects of mobility, from the integration of for-
eign symbols of power to large-scale migrations, or methods of state-building to the strategic
destruction of complex states. The last section combines papers that focus on “Nomadic Inter-
action with the Roman and Byzantine West” traversing the Eurasian steppe zone from east to
west. These case studies, either already comparative or suitable for further comparisons, give
reason to assume that although there are certain encompassing communalities every conquest
and struggle with the empires of the West is historically unique. At the same time it becomes
apparent that the knowledge base of the decision makers in the Roman Empire had been greater
than hitherto thought.
The variety of studies assembled in this volume leaves no doubt as to how dynamically and
diversely the interactions, processes, and transformations developed in the Eurasian steppe zone.
These changes cannot be studied under common schemes of interpretation which are more often
than not inseparable from overcome clichés.
Chinese names and terms have been transliterated according to the Pinyin system, Russian
names and references according to the system of the Library of Congress. Arabic, Persian,
and Turkic names and terms appear in the form chosen by the authors of the individual chap-
ters.
Acknowledgements
The conference had been jointly prepared and organized together with Ursula Brosseder and
Timo Stickler. We thank both of them for their cordial and companionable collaboration.
Susanne Reichert engaged to such an extent in the editing work of the papers that it was a delight
for us to include her as co-editor. The edition of this volume in addition to ongoing obligations
and projects could only be managed as a team.
Our heartfelt thanks also goes to Daniel Waugh, Seattle, who has helped us now repeatedly
with translations and language editing. Without his honorary efforts we would never have been
able to integrate Sergey Vasyutin’s thoughts in this book. Thanks to his enormous overview and
language knowledge Peter Golden saved us from mistakes concerning the correct transliteration
of names in the contributions of Tatiana Skrynnikova and Sergey Vasyutin. Image editing lay
in Gisela Höhn’s sterling hands. She also promoted to create – as far as possible – a unified map
basis for all contributions as to facilitate visualizing the different regions. Editing work was
done by the proven team Ute Arents and Güde Bemmann, substantially supported by Susanne
Reichert. We owe Alicia Ventresca Miller, Kiel, as a native speaker many suggestions for im-
provement and stimuli. All authors and editors highly appreciate their painstaking efforts. For
desktop publishing, which in the face of a multitude of different scripts demands unconventional
solutions, we were able to win Matthias Weis. If not stated otherwise, images were provided by
the authors and merely serve to illustrate.
The conference was made possible by the generous financial support from the Gerda Henkel
Foundation. As always, it was our delight to collaborate with the foundation, a cooperation
characterized by mutual trust. The meeting took place in the LVR-LandesMuseum Bonn, which
during the same time displayed the exhibition “Steppe Warriors – Nomads on Horseback of
Mongolia from the 7th to 14th centuries” (“Steppenkrieger – Reiternomaden des 7.–14. Jahrhun-
derts aus der Mongolei”). Thus the participants had the opportunity to get insight into an on-
10 P REFACE
going cooperation between the Institute of Archaeology of the Mongolian Academy of Sciences,
the Department of Prehistory and Early Historical Archaeology of the University of Bonn, and
the LVR-LandesMuseum Bonn. We thank the State Association of the Rhineland (Land-
schaftverband Rheinland) for the use of rooms and technical equipment of the museum and the
financial support in printing this volume.
Our sincere thanks is owed to everyone who contributed to the success of the conference and
the resulting book. With great joy we remember the inspiring and cordial atmosphere during
the meeting.
Jan Bemmann, Michael Schmauder March 2015

INDEX OF AUTHORS
Prof. Dr. Jan Bemmann Prof. Dr. Nicola Di Cosmo

Prehistory and Early Historical Archaeology Henry Luce Foundation Professor of
University of Bonn East Asian Studies
Regina-Pacis-Weg 7 School of Historical Studies
53113 Bonn, Germany Institute for Advanced Study
E-Mail: jan.bemmann@uni-bonn.de Einstein Drive
Princeton, NJ 08540, USA
Prof. Dr. Michal Biran E-Mail: ndc@ias.edu
Institute of Asian and African Studies
The Louis Frieberg Center for East Asian Prof. Dr. Michael R. Drompp
Studies Department of History
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem Rhodes College
Mt. Scopus 2000 North Parkway
Jerusalem, 91905, Israel Memphis, TN 38112, USA
E-Mail: biranm@mail.huji.ac.il E-Mail: drompp@rhodes.edu
Dr. Ursula B. Brosseder Prof. Dr. Peter B. Golden

Prehistory and Early Historical Archaeology Center for Middle Eastern Studies
University of Bonn Rutgers University
Regina-Pacis-Weg 7 Lucy Stone Hall B-316
53113 Bonn, Germany 54 Joyce Kilmer Avenue
E-Mail: ursula.brosseder@uni-bonn.de Piscataway, NJ 08854, USA
E-Mail: pgolden@andromeda.rutgers.edu
Prof. Dr. Claudio Cioffi-Revilla
Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study Prof. Dr. Thomas O. Höllmann
Computational Social Science, Center for Institute for Chinese Studies
Social Complexity Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich
George Mason University Kaulbachstr. 51a
Research-1 Bldg MS 6B2, 80539 München, Germany
4400 University Drive E-Mail: thomas.hoellmann@lrz.uni-
Fairfax, VA 22030, USA muenchen.de
E-Mail: ccioffi@gmu.edu
704 I NDEX OF A UTHORS
Ass. Prof. Dr. William Honeychurch Prof. Dr. Jürgen Paul

Department of Anthropology Institute for Oriental Studies
Yale University Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg
51 Hillhouse Avenue Mühlweg 15
New Haven, CN 06511, USA 06114 Halle/Saale, Germany
E-Mail: william.honeychurch@yale.edu E-Mail: juergen.paul@orientphil.uni-halle.de
Prof. Dr. Nikolai N. Kradin Prof. Dr. Walter Pohl

Russian Academy of Sciences, Institute for Medieval Research
Far Eastern Branch Austrian Academy of Sciences
Institute of History, Archaeology and Wohllebengasse 12-14
Ethnography 1040 Wien, Austria
Pushkinskaia Ul. 10 E-Mail: walter.pohl@oeaw.ac.at
Vladivostok, 690950, Russia
E-Mail: kradin@mail.ru Dr. J. Daniel Rogers
Smithsonian Institution
Prof. Dr. Étienne de la Vaissière National Museum of Natural History
École des hautes études en sciences sociales Department of Anthropology, NHB 112
(EHESS) PO Box 37012
Centre d’Études Turques, Ottomanes, Balka- Washington, DC 20013, USA
niques et Centrasiatiques (CETOBaC) E-Mail: rogersd@si.edu
190–198, Avenue de France
75244 Paris Cedex 13, France Prof. Dr. Michael Schmauder
E-Mail: vaissier@ens.fr LVR-LandesMuseum Bonn
Colmantstr. 14-16
Prof. Dr. Mischa Meier 53115 Bonn, Germany
Department of History E-Mail: michael.schmauder@lvr.de
University of Tübingen
Wilhelmstr. 36 Prof. Dr. Tatiana Skrynnikova
72074 Tübingen, Germany The Department of Central Asian and South
E-Mail: mischa.meier@uni-tuebingen.de Asian Studies
Institute of Oriental Manuscripts
Dr. Bryan K. Miller Russian Academy of Sciences
Faculty of History Dvortsovaya Emb. 18
University of Oxford Sankt-Petersburg 191186, Russia
George Street E-Mail: skryta999@mail.ru
Oxford OX1 2RL, United Kingdom
E-Mail: millerbryank@gmail.com Ass. Prof. Dr. Sören Stark
Institute for the Study of the Ancient World
Prof. Dr. Marek Jan Olbrycht New York University
Institute of History 15 East 84th St.
University of Rzeszów New York City, NY 10028, USA
Ul. Rejtana 16c E-Mail: soeren.stark@nyu.edu
35-959 Rzeszów, Poland
E-Mail: marekolbrycht@wp.pl
I NDEX OF A UTHORS 705
Prof. Dr. Timo Stickler Dr. Sergey Aleksandrovich Vasyutin

Department of Ancient Studies Department of the History of Civilizations
Friedrich Schiller University Jena and Socio-Cultural Communications
Fürstengraben 1 Kemerovo State University
07743 Jena, Germany Krasnya 6
E-Mail: timo.stickler@uni-jena.de 650043 Kemerovo, Russia
E-Mail: vasutin2012@list.ru
Prof. Dr. Pavel E. Tarasov
Institute of Geological Sciences, Palaeontology Prof. Dr. Mayke Wagner
Freie Universität Berlin Branch office of the Eurasia Department in
Malteserstr. 74-100, Haus D Beijing
12249 Berlin, Germany German Archaeological Institute
E-Mail: ptarasov@zedat.fu-berlin.de Im Dol 2-6, Haus II
14195 Berlin, Germany
E-Mail: mwa@zedat.fu-berlin.de;
mw@eurasien.dainst.de
BONN CONTRIBUTIONS TO ASIAN ARCHAEOLOGY
Edited by Jan Bemmann
1. H. Roth/U. Erdenebat/E. Nagel / E. Pohl (eds.),

Qara Qorum City (Mongolei) 1.
Bonn Contributions to Asian Archaeology, Volume 1 (Bonn 2002).
Out of print – ISBN 3-936490-01-5
2. J. Bemmann/U. Erdenebat/E. Pohl (eds.),

Mongolian-German Karakorum-Expedition, Volume 1.
Excavations in the Craftsmen-Quarter at the Main Road.
Forschungen zur Archäologie Außereuropäischer Kulturen 8 =
Bonn Contributions to Asian Archaeology, Volume 2 (Wiesbaden 2009).
€ 98,00 – ISBN 978-3-89500-697-5
3. P. B. Konovalov,
The Burial Vault of a Xiongnu Prince at Sudzha (Il’movaia pad’, Transbaikalia).
€ 13,90 – ISBN 3-936490-29-5
4. J. Bemmann/H. Parzinger/E. Pohl / D. Tseveendorzh (eds.),

Current Archaeological Research in Mongolia. Papers from the First International
Conference on “Archaeological Research in Mongolia”, held in Ulaanbaatar,
August 19th–23rd, 2007.
€ 74,00 – ISBN 978-3-936490-31-2
5. Ursula Brosseder/Bryan K. Miller (eds.),

Xiongnu Archaeology. Multidisciplinary Perspectives of the
First Steppe Empire in Inner Asia.
€ 80,00 – ISBN 978-3-936490-14-7
6. Catrin Kost,
The practice of imagery in the northern Chinese steppe (5th – 1st centuries BCE).
€ 98,00 – ISBN 978-3-936490-32-9
7. J. Bemmann/M. Schmauder (eds.),
Complexity of Interaction along the Eurasian Steppe Zone in the first Millennium CE
€ 111,00 – ISBN 978-3-936490-14-7
Orders and information: sekretariat.vfgarch@uni-bonn.de (1, 3–7), info@reichert-verlag.de (2)

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CHINA-STEPPE RELATIONS IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

THREE CLASSICAL PROBLEMS

THE OBJECT OF INVESTIGATION

movement of constituencies between opposite camps in search of protection or security, and

STANDARD MODES OF ANALYSIS

RE-FRAMING THE QUESTION

to climate, economic production, and technology, by providing a clearer picture of internal

SIMA QIAN 1985

ALLSEN 1996 BECKWITH 2009

CZEGLÉDY 1983 Empire: The Xiongnu Question Revisited. In:

The Mongol impact on medieval Russian history KRADIN 2008

tai/M. Biran (eds.), Mongols, Turks, and Others. TEGGART 1939

The conference and the publication were generously ﬁnanced by

The conference was co-organized and the book is co-edited by

Ein Titelsatz ist bei der Deutschen Bibliothek erhältlich

Desktop Publishing and Design: Matthias Weis

Cover illustration: Martin Pütz

NOMADIC EMPIRES – MODES OF ANALYSIS

CLAUDIO CIOFFI-REVILLA, WILLIAM HONEYCHURCH, J. DANIEL ROGERS

PAVEL E. TARASOV, MAYKE WAGNER

XIONGNU, THE HAN EMPIRE, AND THE ORIENTAL KOINE

MAREK JAN OLBRYCHT

INNER AND CENTRAL ASIA FROM THE TÜRKS TO THE MONGOLS

NOMADIC INTERACTION WITH THE ROMAN AND BYZANTINE WEST

INDEX OF AUTHORS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 703

Jan Bemmann, Michael Schmauder March 2015

Prof. Dr. Jan Bemmann Prof. Dr. Nicola Di Cosmo

Dr. Ursula B. Brosseder Prof. Dr. Peter B. Golden

Ass. Prof. Dr. William Honeychurch Prof. Dr. Jürgen Paul

Prof. Dr. Nikolai N. Kradin Prof. Dr. Walter Pohl

Prof. Dr. Timo Stickler Dr. Sergey Aleksandrovich Vasyutin

Edited by Jan Bemmann

1. H. Roth/U. Erdenebat/E. Nagel / E. Pohl (eds.),

2. J. Bemmann/U. Erdenebat/E. Pohl (eds.),

4. J. Bemmann/H. Parzinger/E. Pohl / D. Tseveendorzh (eds.),

5. Ursula Brosseder/Bryan K. Miller (eds.),

Orders and information: sekretariat.vfgarch@uni-bonn.de (1, 3–7), info@reichert-verlag.de (2)

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