Ovoo-cairns and ancient funerary mounds in the Mongolian landscape. Piling up a monumental tradition?

Abstract

Ovoo-cairns and ancient funerary mounds in the Mongolian landscape. Piling up... Études mongoles et sibériennes, centrasiatiques et tibétaines, 52 | 2021 spirits of the place" (Mo. gazryn ezed) that are associated with the ovoos (Erdenetuya 2005;Humphrey et al. 1993; Tatár 1984) 4 . 5This study, based on landscape archaeology, survey, and surface observations, rather aims to answer to the ethical and methodological challenges posed when working on (past) materiality so closely connected with local rituals and heritage-making practices (see Gazin-Schwartz & Holtorf 1999;Smith 1999;Porr & Bell 2012). In this way, I can explore the intersection of material, spatial, and symbolic elements potentially accumulating at ovoo sites, which can be compared with relevant written sources and linguistic insights, as well as the results of my fieldwork observations and the conversations with the local herders. Through this interdisciplinary approach, I aim to delve into the multi-dimensional character and the potential ancient roots of these Mongol cairns. While a formal architectonic definition of the ovoo might have critically consolidated in the 16 th and 17 th centuries, during the second Buddhist wave, I hypothesise that some essential traits of these structures could be rooted in a much more distant past. Ovoos and written sources 6One of the most cogent arguments in favour of a relatively recent development of the ovoos is their apparent absence in the early written sources (Atwood 2004, pp. 414-416).In The Secret History of the Mongols, the word ovoo (Cl. Mo. oboγa or its variants, oboo, obo, oboγaya) seems to be unaccounted for 5 . Leaving aside the well-known issues about the origin, interpolations, and translation of this text 6 , it is interesting to note that it features no direct correspondence to words such as shrine, altar, or heap of stones, nor reference to the typical action of piling stones or circumambulating around cairns or other stone objects. The same crux apparently applies to the records by foreign travellers who were in the area during the Mongols' rule, or shortly after. Yet, such a vacuum in the sources might not directly imply the material absence of ovoos in the local landscape. Whilst missing in those accounts, cairns could have been so widespread and perhaps so similar to analogous monuments across central Eurasia that they did not deserve a specific description. On the other side, ovoos are presently so tightly embedded in the sacred and pastoral geographies of Mongolia and neighbouring regions that it is difficult to explain why, if already in existence, they could be omitted in those vivid narratives. According to Atwood (2004, p. 415), heaps could be occasionally mentioned, but "only as markers". Marking the landscape for orientation purposes, however, is one of the primary functions of the ovoos (Humphrey 1995, p. 146). They essentially relate to the movement across the landscape, which takes place within the complex system of spatial knowledge of the local mobile and semimobile communi...