Complexity as Integration: Pastoral Mobility and Community Building in Ancient Mongolia

Abstract

The question of complex socio-political organization among pastoral nomadic groups has long posed a theoretical challenge for anthropologists, historians, and archaeologists alike. The problems arise from a disciplinary tendency to view pastoralists within a narrow economic and ecological framework but, in addition to this, the basic conception of 'complexity' has itself proven problematic. The definitions of complexity built originally upon systems theory and political economy place emphasis on organizational criteria derived primarily from sedentary societies with class stratification, intensive subsistence economies, and centralized administration. In this paper we argue that these classic definitions of complexity have not provided a good fit for analyzing the kinds of political organizations constructed by pastoral nomads of the Eurasian steppe zone. For that reason, we explore new ways of conceptualizing complex organization based on processes of integration, scale, and mobility. This approach offers a better explanation for material patterns documented across two neighboring valleys in northern Mongolia and provides substantial insight to the sub-regional polities preceding the rise of the Xiongnu state during the late first millennium BCE.

Analysis of mitochondrialDNAhaplogroup frequencies in the population of the slab burial mortuary culture of Mongolia (ca. 1100–300 BCE)

“…Archaeologists and historians have argued that the Early Iron Age peoples of Mongolia most likely contributed to the population of the Xiongnu state, although these earlier groups are thought of as dispersed, variable, and politically disaggregated. The results of this study are consistent with hypotheses suggesting that the people who built slab burials shared a common mortuary tradition yet were themselves diverse and descendants of long‐standing local communities in situ from the Bronze Age or earlier (Burentogtokh et al, 2019; Honeychurch et al, 2009; Houle, 2009). These communities would be expected to be locally differentiated while sharing genetic ancestry from both eastern and western populations derived from migrations and interaction events dating from centuries or millennia prior.…”

“…The matrilines of the Xiongnu population certainly descended predominantly from this in situ population that once had practiced slab‐built funerary traditions. Slab burial building communities likely originated from local earlier Bronze Age groups that had merged into larger composite group identities associated with specific territories (Burentogtokh et al, 2019). During the Xiongnu period, there seemed to have been a major increase of western patrilines, mainly of R1a1 and J hgs; however, there does not seem to have been a major change in the mtDNA gene frequencies of the population overall.…”

“…The matrilines of the Xiongnu population certainly descended predominantly from this in situ population that once had practiced slab-built funerary traditions. Slab burial building communities likely originated from local earlier Bronze Age groups that had merged into larger composite group identities associated with specific territories(Burentogtokh et al, 2019). During the Xiongnu period, there seemed to have been a major increase of western patrilines, mainly of R1a1 and J hgs; however, there does not seem to have been a major change in the mtDNA gene frequencies of the population overall.The present research was limited to the sequencing of the HV1 region of the mtDNA D-Loop, with restriction fragment length polymorphism testing for hg diagnostics in the event of ambiguous sequences, and while mtDNA is generally representative of full population ancestry, it is still quite limited compared to high throughput whole genome sequencing.…”

Social adaptive responses to a harsh and unpredictable environment: insights from a pre-Hispanic andean society

“…The persistence of the relative egalitarianism in status and wealth, and the social cohesion mechanisms in use suggest their efficacy in sustaining a functioning society. In such conditions in the past, many societies were nomadic as in the Sahara desert or the Mongolian steppes (Barbaza 2018, Burentogtokh et al 2019, while others, as in the Arab oases or the Tibetan highlands, were sedentary but used irrigation or draft animals (D'Alpoim Guedes et al 2015, Cremaschi et al 2018, two resources absent from our study area. The agrarian societies most comparable to that of the Intersalar seem to be the Ancestral Puebloans, of the Southwestern United States, who developed dry-farming and irrigation without using draft animals (Spielmann et al 2011, Bellorado and Anderson 2013, Bocinsky et al 2016, Bocinsky and Varien 2017, Kohler and Ellyson 2018.…”

Does extra-large equal extra-ordinary? The ‘Wall of Chinggis Khan’ from a multidimensional perspective

“…A more realistic way to approach monumentality in archeology is to identify core aspects of this concept and examine the ways in which they are interconnected and how they are manifested (or not) in concrete case studies (e.g., Burentogtokh et al, 2019;Honeychurch et al, 2009). Such an approach is taken by Brunke et al (2016, 254-255) who stipulates five major criteria for the identification and study of ancient monuments: Size, position, permanence, investment, and the complexity of the given project.…”