Nomadic Material Culture: Western Eurasia in the First Millennium BC

The emergence of fully mobile lifeways is one of the most distinctive features of the Eurasian steppe belt of the first millennium BC. Current scholarship tends to ascribe this shift in subsistence to either technological or environmental factors, such as innovations in bridle design enabling the formation of specialized cavalry and herd management or medium-term changes in precipitation which forced previously settled communities to range more widely for pasture. In this course we will adopt a less determinist approach by bringing into play ethnographic comparanda and the characteristic material repertoire of the nomads. We will give voice to the oral accounts from modern nomads describing mobile herding as a positive lifestyle choice and look at the recurring social activities through which nomadic groups came to perceive themselves as masters of their own destiny. Special attention will be given to the seasonal contexts of production and consumption that structured the nomads’ dwelling in time and place, including food storage for exchange and feasting, leatherprocessing and felt-making for clothing and containers, wood-carving and bronzecasting for bridle equipment, and the construction of monumental mounded tombs. We will bring out how technological choices in everyday life called on artifacts and non-human animals as partners in building the far-flung social networks that allowed nomadic societies to flourish without relying on agriculture, writing, money and commodity exchange. The syllabus will range geographically from the permafrost tombs of Kazakhstan and southern Siberia to the kurgans and hillforts of the northern Black Sea region, associated with the Scythians and Sarmatians in the GrecoRoman textual tradition. We will also evaluate how the ‘ethnographic’ accounts by Herodotus and other ancient authors have shaped representations of nomadism in academic writing, modernist art, and nationalist ideologies. The course will be delivered through in-class discussions, lectures, a museum visit, and a practical craft session. Assessment components include two written assignments and a class presentation. 3 Credits. Satisfies the nonWestern or Pre-1800 requirement.