Abstract:

Buried in the sand of Lop Nur, a tomb decorated with mural paintings (d. 4th to 5th century CE) is in located northeast of a fortified town near Loulan, Xinjiang, on the periphery of great empires. Nonetheless, the borderlands are also contested sites of cultural encounters. Before being devoured by the expanding Lop Desert, Loulan was an important hub along the Silk Road, connecting China, Central Asia, and the Steppes, serving as a nexus of cultural encounters. The tomb structure and decoration exemplify how local elites at Loulan appropriated visual vocabularies from the neighbors to curate a centrality in the afterlife.

This study first investigates the tomb structure and the painted coffin, both of which were inspired by the Han dynasty’s tradition, and, therefore, demonstrate tomb and coffin designers’ in-depth understanding of the Han Chinese notion of the afterlife. I then proceed to examine the pictorial program of the tomb’s mural paintings in both the front and rear chambers. The depiction of banqueting and camel fights, which find their ultimate origins in Western Central Asia, demonstrates a keen interest in incorporating noble pastime activities in tomb decorations as a token of social status. Lastly, I turn to the religious aspect of this funerary monument. While the tomb’s double chamber and a long tunnel share structural commonality with contemporaneous tombs in China, a circular pillar decorated with numerous wheels finds few parallels with Chinese burials. I argue that the presence of a central pillar covered by the wheel motif, signifying the Dharma Law, transforms the tomb’s rear chamber into a Buddhist sanctuary. The architectural implication of a Buddhist temple is reinforced by the mural painting showing a donor worshipping the Buddha. It provides critical evidence to understand the transmission of Buddhism at Loulan and the religious faith of the tomb occupants. The tomb design that masterfully synthesizes Chinese, Central Asia, and Buddhist visual and architectural syntax manifests the centrality of the oasis town in Eastern Central Asia.

Abstract:

The frontiers between China and Inner Asia have been theorized extensively since ancient times, and the economics of the two primary subsistence and production systems on each side – agrarianism and pastoralism – underpin much of the cultural features of their populations and the political-strategic possibilities of their elites. Generations of scholars, such as Owen Lattimore, Arthur Waldron, and David Bello, have also presented solid cases for viewing the geographic realities of this region as determining factors to how history has unfolded here. However, historians of this region tend to avoid adopting theories of universalistic ambitions. For example, to posit a center-periphery paradigm to this frontier would easily risk oversimplifying this region's political economy, not to mention reifying the racist civilization-barbarism hierarchy – criticisms commonly levied against Andre Gunder Frank’s world systems theory. Nevertheless, successive imperial formations controlling this frontier have exhibited recognizable resource management patterns while facing similar economic constraints. Therefore, to understand the dynamics of political power and the movement of natural resources in this region, the task is to reconstruct the dynamics as they occurred in the past. In this paper, I first take on a historiographical task to describe the conclusions already made about the Liao, Jin, and Yuan empires’ management of their political economy and assess the usefulness of the World Systems theory in this context. Secondly, I look at the Jürchen Jin empire’s relationship with Mongolia on the eve of Chinggis Khan’s rise to power, identifying the movement of various types of resources across the frontiers.

Abstract:

Contrary to Andre Gunder Frank’s proposed asymmetric and interdependent core-periphery relationship between nomads and “settled” groups in Central Asia, we see more compelling evidence of a core-periphery dynamic internal to the Mongolian steppe. Beginning as early as the Early Iron Age (c.1000-400 BC) in northern Mongolia, local agriculture appears and diverse grain crops are integrated within steppe diets. The emergence of the Xiongnu state (c.300 BC-200 AD) later saw major intensification of agricultural production in this region that likely served larger purposes of distribution. In the second part of this paper, we present Early Iron Age and Xiongnu Period biomolecular data (stable isotopes, paleoproteomic data, and organic residue analysis) from two peripheral micro-regions located within the Gobi-steppe of southeastern and central Mongolia: Shiriin Chuluu and Baga Gazaryn Chuluu. We show that while a narrow range of grains were part of the diet in the Gobi-steppe by the Early Iron Age, they became ubiquitous and significantly more diverse across the Mongolian steppe under the Xiongnu state. This can be explained by a core-periphery dynamic wherein crops, along with other well attested goods (metal items, beads, silk textiles, timber, etc.), circulated as part of a provisioning system operating between core Xiongnu centers in northern Mongolia and marginal zones represented by sites like Shiriin Chuluu and Baga Gazaryn Chuluu. Taking both papers together, these emerging data complicate Frank’s theoretical foundations regarding steppe political and economic dynamics and should caution researchers against the use of monolithic perceptions to inform globally scaled discussions of prehistory. Ultimately, these results encourage a more nuanced rethinking of the role of steppe populations in world systems.

Abstract:

Andre Gunder Frank’s essay on “The Centrality of Central Asia” argues for Central Asia as the keystone of an Afro-Eurasian world system, noting that it is “where all the outlying peoples and their civilizations connected and interacted with one another.” The idea of Central Asia as a nexus of interaction is indeed well attested in prehistory and beyond. However, much of Frank’s thesis is built upon long held misconceptions about Eurasian steppe peoples (“nomads”) and the basis of their interactions with a “civilized world.” This paper, given in two parts, examines and challenges these misconceptions with new biomolecular evidence. We present a range of recent data from the Mongolian steppe that unequivocally refutes many of Frank’s assumptions, especially regarding the nature of steppe economies and their presumed dependence on the resources of “settled” neighbors for survival. The first part of the paper, introduced here, reports results of the first and earliest formal macrobotanical and isotopic analyses (δ13C, δ15N, 87Sr/86Sr) of a set of locally produced crop assemblages from Late Iron Age (or Xiongnu Period) northern Mongolia (c.300 BC - 200 AD), including the earliest direct evidence for the presence of wheat, barley, oats, and broomcorn millet. It also reports new paleoproteomic evidence from human dental calculus for long distance circulation of crop goods within the broader Mongolian steppe by Early Iron Age (c.1000-400 BC) and continuing through the Xiongnu Period, when the first nomadic state (or empire) in Central Asia formed. These data show that groups in what would become the Xiongnu heartland of northern Mongolia were likely practicing agriculture prior to the development of regional polities or formalized trade relationships with settled “cores," directly challenging the idea that steppe populations would have had to extract foodstuffs from the settled by necessity. Instead, we see evidence of a core-periphery dynamic internal to the Mongolian steppe: one which involved the circulation of steppe-derived goods to areas outside of the Xiongnu heartland.