Xiongnu Pottery

Most work on the Xiongnu has been done in their graves, and the graves hold distinctive Xiongnu pottery.^[1] The settlements are less well known. They show how the everyday pots were made and used.^[2]

The forms

The vessels of the Xiongnu settlements belong to a small set of forms. At the fortified settlement of Ivolga the wide-mouthed jars, the flat-rimmed bowls and two kinds of narrow-necked jars dominate, and one of the narrow-necked jars has a wave pattern on the shoulder.^[3] Strainer jars, large decorated jars, handled beakers, closed-mouthed jars and straight-sided bowls are rarer there.^[3] The Egiin Gol valley yielded the same assemblage of narrow-necked and wide-mouthed jars, flat-rimmed bowls and straight-sided bowls.^[4] In the Khanui valley the range of vessels is the same, with bowls, beakers and a few jars.^[5]

Making the pots

The Khanui pottery is typically grey or grey-brown. Some coarse red-brown wares without decoration resemble those of the Late Bronze Age.^[5] The grey wares have a much finer paste than the red ones. They were built by hand in coils and often finished on what seems to be a slow wheel, to judge from marks on the surface.^[5] The surfaces were smoothed. Decoration was made with a paddle wrapped in thong, with scraped and polished vertical lines or with incised wavy lines.^[5]

Studies of the clay show where the pots were made. The great majority of the pottery at the Xiongnu sites of the Egiin Gol valley was made locally, from clay sources inside the valley. A small share was made from clay from outside the valley.^[6] At one riverside site many of the vessels came from other clay sources of the valley, although the site lies only 300 metres from the largest source.^[6] The authors read this as a sign that people gathered there from other parts of the valley.^[7] Potters were therefore not tied to one workshop. Each valley supplied itself.

Sites and sherds

The survey of the Egiin Gol valley found fifteen Xiongnu sherd scatters, from more than four hectares down to a few square metres. Seven of them are larger than one hectare, and a large settlement lies at the mouth of each wide tributary valley, five to nine kilometres from the next.^[8] At the largest scatter about half the sherds are robust grey ware, and flat-rimmed bowls are far more common there than at any other site. Their diameter averages 41.6 centimetres against 33.7 centimetres elsewhere in the valley. Together with finds of metal this suggests that the site was exceptional.^[7]

In the Khanui valley the excavators counted the share of decorated sherds at fourteen occupation areas. Four areas had somewhat higher shares. At three of them the difference is statistically firm, and most clearly at two. Both lie in the same zone, they are a winter and a summer camp, and both yielded traces of metalworking.^[9] One of the two produced one of the two largest vessels, 26 centimetres across the mouth. The excavators read this cautiously as a possible sign of small differences of social status between the people of the valley.^[10]

After the Xiongnu

The Kokel culture of Tuva belongs to the time between the end of the Xiongnu and the first Turkic khaganate. It differs substantially from the material culture of the Xiongnu.^[11] Its graves usually hold one or two vessels.^[12] Cauldron-shaped vessels have not been found in its settlements, and the excavators think that they may have been made for burials.^[12]

Open points

The sources do not name a Xiongnu potter, a pottery workshop or a kiln, and no kiln of the Xiongnu is described in the studies used here. The Shiji describes the Xiongnu as herders without walled towns or fixed dwellings and without agriculture. The excavated settlements, with their pottery, add to this picture.^[13]^[14]

References

^ Wright 2009, p. 374–375
^ Wright 2009, p. 374, 138; Houle 2011, p. 374, 138
^ a b Wright 2009, p. 375
^ Wright 2009, p. 378
^ a b c d Houle 2011, p. 148
^ a b Wright 2009, p. 378–379
^ a b Wright 2009, p. 379
^ Wright 2009, p. 376
^ Houle 2011, p. 149–150
^ Houle 2011, p. 150
^ Sadykov 2021, p. 1
^ a b Sadykov 2021, p. 5
^ Shiji
^ Wright 2009, p. 372

Sources

Shiji

Literature

Joshua Wright; William Honeychurch; Chunag Amartuvshin, The Xiongnu Settlements of Egiin Gol, Mongolia (2009)
Jean-Luc Houle; Lee G. Broderick, Settlement Patterns and Domestic Economy of the Xiongnu in Khanui Valley, Mongolia (2011)
Timur Sadykov; Gino Caspari; Jegor Blochin; Sandra Lösch; Yulija Kapinus; Marco Milella, The Kokel of Southern Siberia: New data on a post-Xiongnu material culture (2021)