The Archaeology of Mongolia’s Early States

Abstract

The vectors of increasing social complexity, rooted in the late Pleistocene and early Holocene prehistoric Epi-Paleolithic and Neolithic adaptations, include one that has proven, globally, to be especially difficult to investigate using traditional archaeological approaches. That pathway, of course, is one that leads to the emergence of early state-level polities based on the pastoral subsistence systems falling somewhere on a complex continuum from mobile to sedentary. There is, in particular, a rich archaeological record of mobile pastoralists in Mongolia . Since the late nineteenth century, when Mongolian archaeological research began, many aspects of nomadic statehood, economy and religion, as well as cultural and social relations have been investigated. By definition, pastoralist economies, especially those that fall toward the more mobile end of the spectrum, are ephemeral in terms of the material signature they leave in the archaeological record. Mongolian archaeologists and their colleagues are engaged in the ongoing attempt to delineate the complex interwoven trajectories of increasing complexity, and in the maintenance and elaboration of pastoral economic systems. This paper reviews this literature and focuses on the archaeological remains of the Xiongnu , Turkic and Khitan cultures, as well as the medieval Mongols.