Paper short abstract:

In the cold and dry Mongolian plateau, dried livestock dung not only play an important role as fuel, but also have manifold usages in folk medicine, divination, etc. The use of livestock dung is one of the most important cultures in Mongolian pastoral society.

Paper long abstract:

Through the case of Inner Mongolia Xilingool League in Mongolian society, the study aims to notice the widespread use of livestock dung on economical, artistic, cultural, and religious aspects. Mongolian pastoralists mainly has raised 5 kinds of animals as core livestock: cattle, horses, camels, sheep and goats. We study how the dung of those 5 kinds of livestock have been classified and used in the daily life by Mongolian pastoralists. There are more than 30 categorcal names of the 5 kinds of livestock's dung according to wide utilization for different purposes. The dung are classified according to the kind of livestock and the properties of livestock dung, so that we can observe various utilizations of the dung: heating, cooking, hunting, well-digging, leather-tanning, and so on.The dung also has deep relationship with religious culture, as the dung of sheep has been used on divination to find lost livestock.