MIASU Research Seminar with Chris Gosden (University of Oxford)

MIASU Research Seminar with Chris Gosden (University of Oxford)The Horsepower project: tracking links between Mongolia and China in the First Millennium BCE

 

The Xiongnu state in Mongolia and the Qin unification of China derive in part from sustained interactions between the two regions over proceeding millennia. The Horsepower project looks at the movement of horses within the steppe and into China through the application of ancient genetics, together with the movement of Chinese metals and other materials to the north in order to track interactions. We are also carrying out excavations in Mongolia and China on the sites from the middle Bronze Age (c. 1800 BCE) to the end of the first millennium BCE to derive new materials for analysis. We are also interested in the ritual systems of both areas and their role in underpinning politics, through the notion of cosmopolitics, particularly in connection to emerging statehood, mobile in the northern case, radically fixed in China.

 

More details can be found on the project website - https://www.horsepowerproject.org/