Medieval History and Archaeology of the Steppe

The success of the Mongol Empire was due not only because of a superior tactics and battle strategies, but also due to operational planning. The Mongols developed an operational strategy which I term as the tsunami strategy, due to its resemblance to a tsunami or tidal wave. The expansion of the empire was aided by tsunami method of conquest. In this process, the Mongols invaded an area and carried out far-ranging military operations. Using several examples, I demonstrate that their intent, however was not to conquer the entire region; rather, while the Mongols raided and devastated, only a small portion of the area was annexed into the empire. The Mongols then governed and controlled the newly annexed area while the Mongol armies, remained on the frontier of the newly acquired territory. Rather than attempting to control large swaths of the territory they conquered, they retained only a portion of it. Thus they could govern it with fewer troops and keep the bulk of their forces on the periphery.

The Great Steppe stretches from the Volga River and the Caspian Sea in the west to the easternmost limits of Djungaria in Western China. Sometimes referred to as the biggest field in the world, this vast region is as mysterious today as it was a thousand years ago. Despite modern development it remains little visited and little known. This was once a land of nomads, barren and harsh at its centre, but with rich grasslands fed by the many rivers flowing from the surrounding mountains. It was home to a society that kept no records other than the epic poems and songs celebrating the stories of its great batyrs (warriors). Whatever is known of this society survives within local culture – desecrated as it is by years of Soviet cultural vandalism – or in the voices of outsiders who occasionally passed through. Usually they were on their way elsewhere – to India, China, Tibet – but occasionally there were visitors who took more than a passing interest in the lives of the steppe nomads. Their findings and impressions are collected in this book.

Edited and told with relish by Nick Fielding, these are the stories of early papal emissaries like Friar William of Rubruck and Jean de Piano Carpini, sent to negotiate with the Mongols, and the merchant adventurers like Andrew Jenkinson and Jonas Hanway who tried to capture the Silk Road trade. Later came the early scientists and geographers associated with Peter Simon Pallas and the Russian explorers exemplified by Chokan Walikhanov and Petr Petrovich Semenov. Thomas and Lucy Atkinson became the earliest British visitors to spend time in the steppe. They were followed by military adventurers such as Captain Fred Burnaby and James Abbott, and journalists including the great Aloysius MacGahan and David Ker, the original purveyor of ‘fake news’. Besides Lucy Atkinson there were other determined women travellers including Adéle Hommaire de Hell and the remarkable Marie de Ujfalvy-Bourdon, both of whom documented life in the Great Steppe. Cambridge scientist William Bateson spent 18 months traversing the steppes looking for snail shells in the 1880s, and by the end of the 19th century the first tourists – some, like R L Jefferson, on bicycle – were arriving, to be followed by mining engineers and agricultural merchants. All have a tale to tell.

Иван В. Грудочко: Курганы с «усами» Эпоха поздней древности и раннего средневековья урало-казахстанских степей (IV–VII вв. н. э.) (Kurgans with ’moustache’. The epoch of the late prehistory and Early Middle Ages of the Ural-Kazakhstan steppes [4th–7th AD]).
Ред.: Боталов, С. Г. – Türk, A. Studia ad Archaeologiam Pazmaniensia 16. ‒ Magyar Őstörténeti Témacsoport Kiadványok 9. Budapest 2020. ISBN 978-963-9987-72-2

Книга рассказывает о курганах с «усами», получившие свое название из-за оригинальной конструкции в виде двух дугообразных каменных или грунтовых дорожек («усов») длиной до 200 и более метров.
Автору удалось собрать данные о 610 комплексах, расположенных в степях от Восточного Казахстана до Южного Зауралья, создать типологию и сопоставить ее с новейшими данными по радиоуглеродному датированию, что позволило подойти к решению проблемы их культурного и хронологического определения. Дело в том, что долгое время курганы с «усами» связывали с ритуальной практикой скифо-сакских племен. Однако сейчас очевидно, что это не так: их появление относятся к эпохе Великого переселения народов, когда примерно в 4–5 вв. н. э. степи Казахстана осваивают новые кочевники тюркского круга. Вполне допустимо их участие в бурных военно-политических событиях гуннского времени, поскольку несколько курганов с «усами» встречено далеко на западе – в Калмыкии, Крыму и Поднепровье.
Примечательно и другое. В двух южноуральских памятниках была обнаружена кушнаренковская керамика 6-7 вв. н. э. Это дает некоторые основания предполагать, что начальный этап сложения [формирования] протомадьярской общности происходит где-то в пределах урало-казахстанских степей.
Надеемся, что этот и другие сюжеты будут интересны исследователям гуннской и тюркской археологии, поскольку именно через урало-казахстанский степной коридор происходили миграции кочевников с востока на запад, от Джунгарии до Паннонии.

This article concentrates on the genesis of a special form of the drinking
cup and similar vessels with the characteristic handle with horizontal plate – the type called thumb plate. Such vessels were popular in Central and East Asia in the time from the 7th c. to the 10th AD. My research shows that such form of cups with the handle decorated with the horizontal thumb plate should be derived from the Greco-Roman and Byzantine environments. Most probably, two types of decorated drinking cup were used as models: skyphos and modolius. The popularity of the first in eastern provinces of the Roman Empire is indicated by numerous depictions on funeral monuments from Palmyra, the town being an important link in the trade exchange between East and West. Therefore,
such forms could be adopted in Central Asia via the Silk Route and in later times starting from half of the 4th c. throughout Nestorians, whose communities were very strong represented in Central Asia as well as in East Asia. This last indication seems to be very probable because the production of cups with handles with the thumb plate is dated in the
7th c. in Central Asia.

The study deals with the problem of the prestige and bilingualism presented through the Hungarian-Kabar cohabitation. The interpretation
of the role of the Kabars as an auxiliary people of the 9-10th centuries Hungarian Tribal Alliance is generally accepted in Hungarian research. Therefore researchers did not calculate with the significant role of the language of Kabars in the loaning of the Turkish elements of the Hungarian language. It seems contradict this the 39th chapters of the 10th century De Administrando Imperio, which tells about the mutual bilingualism of the Turks (Magyars) and the Kabars. This is the single written source of the probable Turkish-Hungarian bilingualism, which is presumed by the Hungarian language history. So, the subordinated
position of the Kabars in the Hungarian Tribal Alliance cannot be considered a certain fact. The establishment of the Hungarian Nomadic State was initiated by the Khazar khagan, by nominating the first Hungarian prince. This process is connected with the joining
of the powerful Kabars, who seceded from the Khazars. After the joining of the Kabars, the double kingship was established among the Hungarians. The titles of the princes of the Hungarians,
K.nd.h (kündü) and the G.l.h (gyula) are probably of Khazar origin. In addition to these, in the 10th century Hungarian terminology of the state and the conception of state life, a serious Khazar influence can be observed. All these phenomena could be a result of nearly a
century long Hungarian-Kabar cohabitation, but not the result of the just three years long Khazar-Hungarian cooperation. Therefore, it is necessary to accept the story of DAI presenting the significance of the Kabars among the Hungarians.

This presentation provides an overview of the relations between the Roman/Byzantine Empire and the Steppes within the framework of the general dynamics in the Eurasian steppe region in the 10th to 11th centuries CE, including the migrations of Magyars, Pechenegs and Seljuks and their interactions with Constantinople.

Video of the presentation: https://youtu.be/d3AONz1nu9Q

Резюме. Статья посвящена впускному погребению эпохи Великого переселения
народов, обнаруженному в кургане эпохи бронзы у с. Н овая Чигла Таловского района
Воронежской области (Донское левобережье). Погребенный – вероятно, муж-
чина 35–44 лет. На черепе выражены следы преднамеренной деформации головы.
Дата погребения определяется содержащимся в нем набором вещей, имеющим па-
раллели в Северном Причерноморье и на Среднем Дунае, и охватывает промежуток
времени от второй трети V по первую половину VI в., т. е. финальную фазу гуннско-
го и раннюю фазу постгуннского времени в степях Восточной Европы.
Ключевые слова: Донское левобережье, курган, впускное погребение, погребаль-
ный инвентарь, гуннское и постгуннское время.
V. D. Berezutsky, A. V. Mastykova
Th e Grave on the Left Bank of
the Mi ddle Don Dated to the Mig ration Period
Abstract. The paper explores a dug-in grave from the Migration Period discovered in
a Bronze Age kurgan near the village of Novaya Chigla of the Talovsky District in the
Voronezh Region (the Don Left Bank). The deceased person is a man of 35–44 years. His
skull shows the signs of deliberate deformation. The date of the grave is determined by
a set of funeral offerings, which have parallels in the graves from the Northern Black
Sea maritime steppes and the Middle Danube and covers a timespan from the second
third of the 5th century to the second half of the 6th century, which means the final stage
of the Hun period and the early stage of the post-Hun period on the Eastern Europe
steppes.
Keywords: Don Left Bank, kurgan, a dug-in grave, funeral offerings, Hun and post-Hut
periods.

The presentation provides an overview of the relations between the Roman/Byzantine Empire and the Steppes within the framework of the general dynamics in the Eurasian steppe region in the 6th to 7th centuries CE.

Video of the presentation: https://youtu.be/ZRbKVecxzn0

Turkic speaking nomads were one of the main sources of military manpower for the Khwarazmshahs - but at the same time, the nomads followed their own agenda and tried to use their Khwarazmian allies for their purposes. The article analyses the relationship between the Khwarazmians on the one hand and the Qarluq and the Qipchap on the other.

With a name, we identify a community. But if we consider how people assigned and used names in the early Middle Ages, we are confronted with limits and problems. On the one hand, communities were organized in several ways, and the different kinds of identities (e.g. person, state, clan, ethnic group) can be confusing and thus can be confused. On the other hand, the history of a name and the object it denote can lead in different directions: a name could identify more peoples or groups, and conversely, a single ethnic group could have many denominations. “Magyar” is now the vernacular name of the Hungarians who first emerged as a distinct group in the ninth century, but this noun appeared much earlier and not in a group-identifying function. Around the year 530, a Kutrigur-Hunnic king lived who was mentioned as “Muageris” by Byzantine authors. Some scholars have observed the similarity between the name “Muageris” and the ethnonym “Magyar.” Another Byzantine work (De Administrando Imperio ca. 950) enumerates the “clan of Meger” among the “Turk” [Hungarian] clans, and centuries later the Hungarian gestas and chronicles mention “Hetumoger,” “het Mogor” as “seven Hungarians.” If one compares the Byzantine sources with internal sources, it is possible that King “Muageris” can be inserted into the frame of the written data. The noun “Magyar” had four coherent functions. It was used as 1) a personal name, “Muageris” and “Magor,” the latter of whom was one of the forefathers of the Hungarians according to their original ethnic myth; 2) a toponym for the ancient homeland, i.e. the Hungarian chronicles use “Magor” for “Scythia” or “Magoria” to refer to part of “Scythia”; 3) the name of one of the leading clans, the clan of “Meger”; and 4) an ethnic name, i.e. “Hetumoger” or “het Mogor” as ‘seven Hungarians’.

Examined in this study is possible survival of the early Avar power centre as reflected by the location of the sites that can be linked to the ruling elite and the military elite relative to each other, which in turn can also yield new insights regarding the territorial organisation of the Avar Khaganate.
The presence of a not particularly large armed group can be posited in the Danube-Tisza interfluve during the second and final third of the seventh century, whose sole weapons were bows and arrows. They settled in a small area in the early Avar period, while during the middle Avar period, they appear as isolated communities living far apart from each other. Their grave goods include articles that have no antecedents in the khaganate, whose analogies can be traced to Central Asia, suggesting that they represent smaller armed groups from that region. Their appearance can be linked to the practice of nomadic empires that when the power of the elite began to crumble for one reason or another, it “sent for” armed reinforcements to maintain and secure its position. The three case studies cited here suggest that these groups were armed communities skilled in archery tactics.

The article makes a detailed typological analysis of the headdress fittings of the Avar age, the construction of the headdresses, the age of the headdress wearing and we make states – based on new data – the chronological position of the trend of the headdress wearing more precisely.

For an understanding of certain features of early Hungarian history the well-documented history of the Crimean Khanate seems to offer a useful analogy. The respective environments of the Crimean Tatars and the conquering Hungarians are comparable from several regards, and such a comparison makes it possible to interpret the little evidence we have about the military and political conditions in the period of the Hungarian conquest and subsequent foreign campaigns in the light of what is known about the relationship between the foreign military and diplomatic activities of the Crimean Khanate and its interior structures – thus detaching ourselves from the generally futile terminological debates.
The period between the fall of the Uyghur Empire and the rise of the Mongol power,
a period of steppe history dominated by the dispersal of „sovreignty”, separatism instead of universalism, and the growth in force of local interest groups, offers several interesting parallels with the phenomena that could be observed after the collapse of the Mongol imperial structures of the Ghengisids.
As far as we know, the kindreds led by the so-called karachi beys constituted one of the foundations of the Crimean Khanate right from its establishment. Offi cially, it was the four karachi beys that chose from among the members of the ruling dynasty the new khan; his election and institution was followed by mutual oath-taking, in the manner of the treaty of blood in the history of Anonymus. Moreover, according to the DAI, at the election of the fi rst ruler, the „fi rst voevode” called Levedi even enjoyed a right of proposal similar to that of the bas karachi.
Although the Crimean Tatars obviously constituted a „people under one authority”,
the ruler could nevertheless only decide in important issues of foreign policy after taking counsel with the karachi beys – as the archontes of the „Turks” also decided in council about the proposed cooperation against the Pechenegs brought to them by the Byzantine cleric Gabriel. Nor was the relationship maintained with foreign powers a monopoly of the khan – a situation that is also hinted at in the case of the „Turks” both by the address of a Byzantine imperial letter „to the archontes of the Turks” and by Byzantine political practice.
Although the karachi status was always held by four or fi ve kindreds in the Crimea,
these were not always the same. When one of them became weaker for some reason, it fell back in prestige as well, and could thus be excluded from the ranks of the privileged karachi kindreds for quite some time. It is probable that the power relations of the conquering Hungarians constituted a similarly fl uid and open structure, in which change played as important a role as stability.

In the present study we deal with a rare object type from the Avar period; namely with the carved or turned short rolls made of bone or horn, which formed mouthpiece of leather or bladder hoses. We know 38 pieces of them among the historical relics of the Avar period.
Most of their archaelogical sites are situated along the right side of the Tisza and left side of the Danube, and in the north-eastern corner of Transdanubia. 28 of them originate from the Danube–Tisza Interfluve, and based on this, bone mouthpieces of hoses can be kept distinctive pieces of Avar period finds from this area. In 4 graves along the Central Tisa there were 2-2 pieces, in other cases they were found one by one.
We reconstruct their forms and closures on the base of ethnographic analogies and the Asian stone sculptures. The positions of the mouthpieces of hoses in graves show, that the hoses were worn suspended from a belt.
Their chronological position are given based on their accompanying findings. Based on the earrings, beads, brooches, bone-disc boxes, belt ornaments and weapons they can be dated to the second quarter of the 7th century to the end of the century, or possibly to the beginning of the 8th century.

ISBN 978-84-941099-7-3

Desde tiempos inmemoriales Asia ha sido la cuna de numerosos imperios pero, de entre todos ellos, llegando a abarcar desde el Pacífico hasta el Mediterráneo y desde Siberia hasta el Índico, los mongoles crearon el más extenso y poderoso que ha conocido la Historia. Sería el noble Temujin, del clan Borjigin, quien encabezó dicha hazaña al ostentar por vez primera el título de Gengis Kan o Gran Kan. Unió al, hasta entonces, dividido pueblo mongol y convirtió a sus habitantes, nómadas pastores de las estepas (Lane, 2006: 17), en los guerreros más temidos de la Edad Media. Reinos e imperios cayeron a sus pies, tras vencerlos en incontables batallas, obteniendo los mongoles riquezas sin fin. Gracias a diversos cronistas árabes, chinos, rusos, etc., contamos con un conocimiento relativamente amplio y veraz de su historia, aunque la fuente principal procede de la Historia Secreta de los Mongoles, obra de autor desconocido y compilada quizá alrededor del año 1226, un año antes de la muerte del Gran Kan, que junto a numerosas leyendas recoge la tradición oral de los sucesos que narraremos.

In the 13th century, the rulers of the ascending Mongol Empire built a palace and a city in the valley of the river Orkhon. Its ruins are to be found at the foothils of the Khangaj mountains in the heart of what is today the Mongolian State. The city was the centre of a global, multiethnic and multireligious empire. It became a melting pot for pople of diverse cultural backgrounds. Despite the Mongol masters of the city, Turkic, Chinese, Korean, Iranian, Russian, Armenian and also some Western Europeans amongst others gathered here. Due to this diversity, a wide range of written sources is available for the study of the citys history. Its site has been identified in the 19th century already. Since then it was subject of archaeological research. The availability of a wide spectrum of written and archaeological records allows to discuss questions of cultural contact and intercultural communication from the perspective of a historical archaeology, employing both the written and the archaeological record. The present work is a case study, which analyses the excavated remains of a remarkable building complex in the northern district of Qara Qorum. In the course of the thesis, the excavated features and artefacts are presented, their informative value for issues of cultural contact within the Mongol Empire is explored and they are correlated with the written record. Furthermore, reconstructions of the excavated buildings are developed on the basis of architectural traditions, which where effective within the Mongol Empire. An interpretation of the buildings as a christian Church, also mentioned in the written record, is discussed. Finally the function and meaning of the city as a medium of communication between a nomad elite and their sedentary subjects is considered.

A small group of medieval archaeological sites of sedentary population, in the steppe Dnieper rapids region (Yatseva Balka, Petro-Svystunove, Oleksiivka, Perun and others), have long attracted the attention of researchers of different cultures. This has led to contradictory chronological, cultural, ethnic and political attributions.
Local pottery making tradition have been compared with pottery traditions of the Pastyrs’ke and Kantsyrka types, Saltiv culture, Slavic Raiky (Luka-Raikovets’ka) culture, the culture of the First Bulgarian Kingdom and “Balkan-Danubian” sites of the Dniester-Danubian interfluve. It was also considered as a local tradition within the framework of the culture of the Old Rus’ state. Researchers have suggested that the Slavic (Ulitchi tribe), “Alan-Bulgarian”, Alan or mixed Slavic-Nomad are the origin of the population. The various dating of the sites have proposed framework from 7th till 14th centuries. Such heterogeneity of opinions have not allowed this cultural group to
be placed in a real historical context.
The main problem is the selective publication of materials from the settlement in Yatseva valley (“Yatseva Balka”), which is the only one excavated within a large area. Analysis of field documentation and the collection of finds testifies that the so called “archaic” pottery of the “Southern Dnieper type” was combined in complexes of the Yatseva settlement with fragments of the “Ganos” type amphorae, “Middle Dnieper type” pottery of the 2nd half of the 13th – first half of the 15th centuries and Crimean glazed ware of the 14th centuries. Settlements of the Yatseva Balka type belonged to a small group of the population, poorly integrated into the economy of the Golden Horde.
The new data compels to exclude the group of Yatseva Balka from the context of the Early Medieval archeology and considers it in the context of complex processes of ethnic and cultural changes in the steppes of Eastern Europe in the Golden Horde period.

It is now relatively common knowledge, for scholars of Byzantium, Kievan Rus’ and the early Islamic Caliphate, that a series of rulers in the Pontic-Caspian steppe, known as the Khazars, converted to Judaism sometime between the 8th-10th centuries.  Often, it has been treated as an historical “anomaly” vis-à-vis the conversions of other potentates: a ruler could convert himself and his people to Christianity or Islam, but to Judaism?  Newer scholarship has recast the event with improved contextualization; it was not an anomaly so much as one of many such narratives of conversion and polity generation.  Though some reject this, most scholars now agree that variegated and independent textual evidence confirms the conversion of the Khazarian khağans to Judaism.  While the precise dating is widely disputed due to the sources, which I will discuss, I will focus on the social extent of conversion based on archaeological evidence.  To what extent might newly discovered archaeological indications agree with primary sources for the Judaization of Khazaria?

Publié dans l’Annuaire de la Section des Sciences historiques et philologiques de l’EPHE, n°147, Paris, Sorbonne, 2016, p. 317-334.

Dans la continuité avec le travail entrepris les années précédentes, nous poursuivons la traduction complète et commentée de l’Histoire des Liao (Liaoshi 遼史). Nous avons pu ainsi parcourir cette année quatorze années (1013-1026) du règne de l’empereur Shengzong. L’édition de la traduction commentée, prévue à moyen terme, ne pourra être réalisée qu’après l’achèvement d’une section majeure du Liaoshi, comme la chronologie (« Benji »), et un résumé présente un intérêt limité. C’est pourquoi nous avons préféré, comme les années précédentes, reproduire ici la traduction brute du texte qui constitue en quelque sorte une édition partielle et provisoire du document final. Les seuls éléments du texte original qui ne figurent pas dans cette traduction sont les indications précises des jours à l’intérieur d’un mois, et ce dans le but d’alléger et de raccourcir le texte.