Mongolian Archaeology Tomorrow
Dr Joshua Wright is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Archaeology at the University of Aberdeen. He is a landscape archaeologist with a research focus on East Asia.
A national museum focused on Chinggis Khaan opened in Ulaanbaatar in 2022. In November of 2022, the National University of Mongolia hosted a conference to open their new archaeological institute. The meeting included what one might expect of such an event anywhere in the world, bright polyglot students, young academics with top flight international PhDs, and foreign scholars. The institute is the outcome of a commitment by Mongolia’s premier university and a dream team of Mongolian archaeologists that brought it together to empower the study of Mongolia’s cultural heritage. Through these developments and visions archaeology in Mongolia today is a microcosm of the modern nation.
The historical arc of modern Mongolian archaeology starts with early engagement by international researchers at the dawn of modern archaeology, but was dominated by the long period of influence by Soviet scholarly traditions during the 20th century. The inflection point towards Mongolian archaeology today can be found in two developments in the early 21st century. First, the construction of a robust Cultural Resource Management system paralleling the spread of large scale mining in the country, and second the domestication of international collaborative research by Mongolian institutions. These provided financial viability, experience in managing asymmetric research relationships, and have trained two generations of Mongolian archaeologists with the most up-to-date research approaches. Over the years, a positive environment for international research and advanced study has developed. Today we see the same balancing act in archaeology as we see for the entire nation, remaining internationally oriented and autonomous while balancing the desired pasts of its two large neighbours, Russia and China. The latter can be seen in research collaborations and student training, while the former is seen in many bilateral collaborative research projects, the UNESCO recognition of several archaeologically focused World Heritage Sites, and the European Research Council’s commitment of millions of Euros to archaeological research focused on Mongolia. Certainly there are risks to the future, will the institutions that are just beginning be able to develop and build their capacity? Or will dependence and corruption sweep away their independence as they did other earlier institutions in post-soviet Mongolia?
What, you might wonder, have these past two decades of archaeological research brought us? Cataloguing the details, we see that the massive tombs of the eastern steppe’s late Iron Age rulers (known as Hunnu or Xiongnu — 3rd century BCE – 2nd century CE) continue to yield treasures as they have since the first excavations almost 100 years ago, but now these sites have the complex and extensive contemporary context of industrial production sites, ordinary cemeteries, and inhabited centres.
Chinggis Khaan (Genghis Khan) who, outside of Mongolia is seen as a nomadic conqueror like no other, rose to prominence in a world of herders, town dwellers, and the ruins of the empires that came before him. Archaeology today is weaving a picture of the time before Chinggis through the military and urban infrastructure of the Kitan-Liao who ruled the eastern steppes of Eurasia more than a century before the rise of the Mongols. The apex of Medieval Mongolia was Karakorum, the capital city of the Mongol Empire (13th-14th CE). Many years of research have mapped and documented this extensive ruin and its hinterlands. Here also, recent and on going archaeological work has given this singular site context. Small settlements have been excavated across the country, discoveries about how the Mongol rulers memorialised their ancestors made, and other large cities and trade-centres explored. Cold and dry high elevation sites have yielded the clothing of medieval Mongolians, showing us the cutting edge of Eurasian fashion during that age of empire. However, near Karakorum can be found the remains and an even larger city. The metropolis of Khar Balgas, capital of the Uighur Khaganate (8th-9th CE). Early Arab and Chinese travellers described its orchards, canals and palaces. This site has been extensively mapped, but excavation has only just begun to provide depth and life to the city. From this same time, the spectacular tomb of Shoroon Bumbagar, held the remains of a Eurasian official of the Tang Dynasty who returned to their homeland for burial, bringing their international style and prestige with them.
Analytical archaeology has transformed the field worldwide. In Mongolia, biomolecular archaeology has demonstrated the region’s role as a wellspring of populations and a centre of dairy technology development. Metallurgical studies show a hot-house of adaptive innovation in bronze and iron technology including small scale crucible steel making, the technology behind legendary medieval Eurasian weapons.
Research on mortuary traditions of the 2nd millennium BC has been driven by Mongolian scholars defining typologies of monumental constructions to fit their own research needs, not pan-regional narratives. Recent excavations at sites from the middle Holocene, 8000-5000 years ago, across the Gobi Desert have shown the forerunners of those monument builders to have been trying many sorts of adaptation to their changing environments. Over the next few years these discoveries could overturn existing paradigms of the origins of humanity’s third path of subsistence, nomadic pastoralism.
Why does Mongolian archaeology matter? To those who are passionate about prehistory and the past, the current archaeology of Mongolia is exciting and transformative, offering developments that will change our understanding of the Eurasian past and the ways in which we do research. In all these Mongolian projects there is a strong sense of local relevance. Studies focus on autochthonous developments, intercultural identities, diplomacy, and adaptations to a changing world, in short, archaeology’s answers are for questions in both the past and the present. They all present a narrative of Eurasia as a dynamic centre, not something to pass over on the way to Eurasia’s peripheries.
*image above credit: DMS Project and National University of Mongolia Archaeological Research Centre.
The opinions expressed are those of the contributor, not of the RSAA.
