Acta Mongolica

Introduction

Baatarnaran Tsetsentsolmon — 2023-09-14

Karabalgasun and Karakorum

Hendrik Rohland — 2023-09-13

This paper introduces the phenomenon of urbanism in the context of the medieval empires of the steppe from a historical archaeological perspective. Several of the Inner Asian empires that emerged from predominantly nomadic societies developed some degree of urbanization. However, it seems inappropriate to regard this as a transition from nomadic to sedentary societies. On the contrary, we argue that the cities of these polities represent a specific type of urbanism that could only exist in this form in a nomad environment and served to facilitate interactions between the nomad elites and their often-sedentary subjects, allies and enemies. In this paper we present some of the archaeological evidence from two of these sites: Karabalgasun, the Uyghur capital from around 745 until 840 and Karakorum, which was allegedly founded 1220 by Genghis Khan and came to be known as capital of the Mongol Empire. In the comparison of the archaeological remains and the representation of these sites in the written sources of different cultures lie the hints that provide an insight into the purposes these cities served for their builders.

Paradise Lost

Lhagvasuren Erdenebold — 2023-09-16

In 2011, the Mongolian and Kazakhstan joint expedition, dates approximately to the seventh century (A.D. 650–670), excavated a tomb of Shoroon Bumbagar, decorated with a wall painting, in Bayannuur sum of Bulgan province. The structure of the Shoroon Bumbagar tomb, murals and burial objects clearly exhibit tastes of nomads who resided along the Silk Roads and the Steppe Route. Comparing to funerary art traditions in East Asia such as Chinese and Koguryo mural tombs, it represents nomadic culture as well as the broad interactions from Byzantine Empire to China. With wall paintings and burial objects, this newly excavated mural tomb in Mongolia reveals significant information about the cultural exchanges between nomads and settled people along the Silk Roads. The burial objects excavated from the tomb include male and female figurines, either standing or riding on a horse, two tomb guardian figures, two tomb guardian animal figures, animal figurines, gold and bronze objects, fragments of a golden floral crown ornament, and Byzantine coins of the Emperor Heraclius, dated around the 630s. It is certain that the remarkable new findings from the tomb would bring a new perspective in the study of the history of tombs and demonstrates cultural exchanges and transmissions of the funerary arts of Asia along the Silk Roads.

From Childhood Trains to Minecarts

Baatarnaran Tsetsentsolmon — 2023-07-29

This paper explores the historical and contemporary railroad constructions in Mongolia and socio-cultural transformation due to the infrastructural changes. In order to transport the minerals to markets in and above all outside Mongolia, especially China and Russia, states and private companies invest in rail and road transport (plans). When the first long distance railway was built as ‘a gift from Stalin’ between 1947 and 1949, herders who never had seen engine techniques, imagined the railway as a ‘metal snake’ (tomor) that drilled mountains and crossed rivers. Today many people have high hope of this infrastructural modernization and expect better economic development and quality of life as result of the railway expansion. Until now most of the planned new infrastructures such as “The Steppe Road” exist on paper and in the minds. In this research, we are investigating recently realized railway projects in Selenge province in northern Mongolia. The presentation of this infrastructure focuses on the social encounters of and the cultural impact on involved workers, herder families and the natural landscape (including spirit beings). Which economic, ecological and sociocultural changes go hand in hand with the development of the railway? The investigation, based on fieldwork in the years 2017–2019, includes studies on material and visual culture using primary and secondary sources.

Connected but Dispersed

Manlai Nymdorj — 2023-07-29

“Postmodernity” or the “postmodern condition” is described as a cultural condition when capitalism penetrates further into the cultural world. Previously outside of global capitalism, Mongolia as one of the third wave of democracies after the fall of the Soviet bloc, is now slowly entering this state of postmodernity with increased exposure and connectivity with the global capitalist system. As postmodernity in effect, societies where cultural life was previously free of capitalist incorporation now left to navigate the world of competing ideas and narratives at increased speed, saturated by information through media presentations and hyperbole. The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is the most recent all-round project to add to an already saturated condition with its stream of information. As the BRI seeks to increase regional connectivity with China and subsequently with the rest of the world, further strengthening the global capitalist system, it welcomes another channel of various other forces further saturating and exhausting the postmodern condition. Often framed as an anti-exploitative alternative to globalization, the BRI brings competing narratives, ideas and cultural frameworks, fragmenting rather than binding together various other existing bubbles and dispersing them like atoms. Communities and localities located in the BRI sphere, though physically connected, now must navigate a very chaotic flow of information directed at them.

The Silk Road as a Model for the BRI

Shagdarsuren Egshig — 2023-07-29

Roads are dynamic. Among various trade roads such as the Great Inka Road, Steppe Road, Silk Road, Tea Horse Road, Tea Road and Maritime Porcelain Road, the Silk Road has been raised three times in its history. Nomads and merchant communities on Silk Road moved more frequently, they had more opportunities to make pathways. The Mongols established their horse courier stations (Mongolian: örtöö) in the vast Eurasian plain during the Mongolian Empire. Through the courier service, letters, oral messages and news passed extremely rapidly. The Mongolian Khans or emperors created a management of trade routes across different countries, providing and protecting peace on the territory. They established the Pax Mongolia (Mongol Peace) in various countries. During the time of Mongol Peace, many different commodities, methods of trade, forms of international trade, forms of financial instruments and new payment facilities were originated along the Silk Road. The Mongols “globalized” the world at that time. Nowadays the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is adopting similar operations in its current foreign and economic policies. In 2013, the Chinese president announced the “Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st-century Maritime Silk Road” strategy; the term was further abbreviated as to the “Belt and Road Initiative” (BRI) expressing a comprehensive economic structure for the land-based economies of Eurasia and sea routes to Europe, Africa and other Asian ports. The concept of the historical Silk Road stays behind the the BRI initiative.

The Animalification of Nationalist Sentiments

Dulam Bumochir — 2023-07-29

This paper is about what I call the animalification of nationalist sentiments, based on stories, poems and films about some runaway horses returned to their birthplace, which Mongolians commonly call the nutag (homeland). These stories, poems and films deliver a message that even “Mongol horses” have a sense to love, miss, find and return to their nutag, and critiques those involved in mining and other businesses with environmental destruction as being worse than horses. The analogy of man and horse in this paper helps us to understand, first, how Mongolians perceive and explain sources of nationalist sentiment as natural and inevitable and, second, how a sense of nutag shared by both man and animal shapes human-animal relations.

The Gobi Khulan

Petra Kaczensky — 2023-09-14

Khulan, the Asiatic wild ass, have been eradicated from most of their former range. The Mongolian Gobi currently holds more than 80% of the global population and constitutes more than 70% of the global breeding range and therefore is the most important stronghold of the species. In the Mongolian Gobi, individual khulan roam over thousands of square kilometers annually and their movements are among the largest reported for terrestrial mammals globally. The high mobility of khulan plays a critical role for the ecosystem functioning of the Mongolian Gobi, including large-scale seed dispersal and provision of water holes for other wildlife. Khulan also have non-consumptive aesthetic and naturalistic values for local residents and harbor the potential for wildlife tourism and subsistence hunting. The species is currently listed as Near Threatened in the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List, but remains under close scrutiny because multiple developments which negatively impact the size, quality and functional connectivity of the Gobi–Eastern Steppe ecosystem are happening simultaneously and at an unprecedented speed in an ecosystem which so far has remained at a near natural stage. These developments are the: 1) dramatic increase in livestock numbers and a change in the traditional herding practice, 2) rapid development of the resource extraction sector, and 3) expansion and upgrading of the transport infrastructure to meet the needs of the mining sector and allow Mongolia to connect to international markets. The paper explores how these threats may affect khulan in the future and why khulan are an ideal flagship species for mobility and landscape connectivity.

Contributors

2023-09-14