“Barbarians” at the “Golden Gate of the East?”: Nomadic Archaeology and the Search for Roots in Siberia

By the end of the 19th century both in the Russian Empire and globally, an interest emerged in identifying, studying and cataloguing the material objects attributed to ancient nomadic peoples. Even in the context of the global “archaeological boom” which began roughly in the 1850s, this “archaeology of nomadism” was fundamentally paradoxical. Archaeology as a science aimed precisely to prove historical rootedness and historicity of a given group through “objective” material evidence. Simultaneously, turn-of-the-century science generally understood nomads and nomadic cultures as “primitive”, “transient”, and therefore implicitly incapable of historical ties to a given territory in part because of their very itinerancy. In the case of the Russian Empire there was an added element of complexity, as nomads -- the “atavistic survivals” of bygone eras -- were also a part of the diverse mix of imperial subjects with competing agendas and visions of the future in a rapidly modernizing polity. 

This talk highlights the attempts of a group of exile-scholars based in Siberia, calling themselves Regionalists [Oblastniki] to resolve this paradox in light to their 1888 discovery of the “nomadic site” of Karakorum, the capital of Genghis Khan's Empire in Mongolia.

Speaker: Ismael Biyashev (University of Michigan)

Discussant: Naomi Caffee (Reed College)