Gol Mod

Gol Mod is the name of two Xiongnu cemeteries in Mongolia, numbered 1 and 2. Gol Mod 2 lies in the Khanui valley of north-central Mongolia and is the one the excavation reports describe.^[1] Gol Mod 1 appears in them only in comparisons.^[2]

Location

A project on early nomadic pastoralism in the Khanui valley found and mapped Gol Mod 2 in July 2001.^[1] The cemetery lies north of the Khangai mountains, about 12 kilometres east of the Khanui river, in Öndör Ulaan district of Arkhangai province. It stands on sandy level ground among the flanking hills, at 1,800 metres.^[3] Mountains close it in on three sides, from the east to the south, and a river opens it to the north.^[4]

The Khanui valley is counted among the likely heartlands of the Xiongnu state, because it holds major Xiongnu cemeteries and most of the known walled settlements.^[5] A study of settlements in the valley found no social distinctions among them that compare with those of the cemetery.^[6]

The cemetery

Gol Mod 2 measures 2.2 kilometres from west to east and 1.3 kilometres from north to south.^[1] The first survey counted more than 400 burials.^[3] Among them were 98 tombs with a ramp leading up to a platform, of 8 to 83 metres in length, about 250 small circular satellite burials and about 85 large circular graves.^[7] The ramps point toward the bottom of the gentler slope and the stream.^[7]

A later survey counted 571 stone tombs.^[4] Of these, 104 are square tombs with a passage, which some scholars call terrace tombs.^[4] A further 326 are circular satellite tombs, and 141 are independent circular tombs.^[4] The surveyors note that turf covers the smaller tombs, so that the count may be incomplete.^[4]

The survey compares the cemetery with two others. Noyon Uul covers 17.5 square kilometres and has about 212 burials, 29 of them terrace tombs.^[8] Gol Mod 1 covers 7.56 square kilometres and has 483 tombs, 214 of them terrace tombs, by a survey of 2014.^[8] Gol Mod 2 covers 2.86 square kilometres. It has the smallest area of the three and the largest number of tombs.^[8] Another study counts it among the largest Xiongnu cemeteries in Mongolia.^[9]

Large tombs at Gol Mod 1 and at Noyon Uul are documented to reach 17 metres in depth, and such shafts could hardly be dug in frozen ground. On this ground, one study concludes that the burials of Gol Mod 2 were probably made in the warm season.^[10]

Tomb 1 and its satellite burials

The most prominent monument of Gol Mod 2 is the Tomb 1 complex. Its ramp and platform together are 83 metres long. This is the largest Xiongnu burial known.^[7] The excavators of 2002 to 2005 dug the 27 satellite burials that stand in an arc east of the platform, and a twenty-ninth burial north of it. When they wrote their report in 2006, the central tomb was still unopened.^[11]

All 27 satellite burials of the arc had been looted. Each held the remains of a wooden coffin, except one. The pits lay between 101 and 235 centimetres deep.^[12] The surface circles of the burials grow larger from south to north, and the northern graves are deeper. The excavators read this as a planned set, laid out together.^[13]

Skeletal remains survived in 23 of the 27 burials, in poor condition. The excavators could determine nine of the dead as male.^[14] The skulls and teeth look Asian, like those from other Xiongnu burials, and the excavators think that some of the dead may have been related.^[15] The man in burial 27 does not fit this pattern. The excavators suggest that he spent his early years in another region.^[16] Children and adolescents lay in the southernmost burials.^[14]

Fourteen of the 27 burials held horse remains, and seven of them held whole horse skulls. Cattle and sheep or goats were less common.^[17] Burial 29, north of the platform, held only a horse without its head.^[18]

The excavation of 2017 to 2019 compares its finds with those of Tomb 1. Of the 29 satellite tombs of Tomb 1, 23 held animal bones, and more than twenty horse skulls were found in the complex.^[19]

Finds

Iron objects make up most of what the satellite burials yielded. They include belt clasps, buckles, bits, knives, arrowheads, a cauldron and a bell. Pottery came mostly as sherds.^[20] Other finds are amber beads, iron objects covered with gold foil, a gold earring, two bronze disks and a Chinese bronze mirror of the TLV type.^[21] The bronze mirror corresponds to mirrors of the Wang Mang period, 9 to 23 CE, or soon after. The excavators therefore date the site to the early or middle first century CE.^[22]

The grave of a child, burial 3, held 267 polished sheep ankle bones.^[21] Of these, 36 carry incised signs, some of them never seen before. They make up almost half of the marked ankle bones known from the Xiongnu period.^[21] One study takes such signs on knucklebones from Xiongnu graves and settlements for marks of a nomadic clan, used in divination or play, and not for marks of individual owners.^[23] The article on knucklebones treats the custom.

The excavation of 2017 to 2019

A Mongolian-Chinese project worked at Gol Mod 2 in three field seasons, from July 2017 to August 2019. It surveyed the cemetery and excavated two tombs, numbers 189 and 10.^[24]

Tomb 189 is a square tomb with a passage.^[8] Its chamber is 29 metres long on the east, west and north sides and 26 metres on the south side. The passage is 20 metres long. Twelve circular satellite tombs lie in an arc on its east side.^[8] The satellite tombs had all been disturbed. In several of them, the skull or the upper body was missing, while pottery and metal objects were intact. The excavators speculate that this was retaliation and not looting.^[19]

The coffin lay about 11 metres below the top of the ceiling. The burial held one inner coffin and two layers of outer coffin. The coffin was painted with red lacquer. Looters had taken the contents of the inner coffin. Layers of textile and of millet in husk lay at the bottom of the coffin.^[25] Among the finds are two gilded silver dragons and a jade belt hook. The excavators report that these appeared in tombs of the Xiongnu nobility for the first time.^[26]

The excavators dated the tomb by radiocarbon to about 0 CE and no later than 72 CE.^[27] A young man’s skeleton lay face down on the outer coffin. The excavators cannot tell whether he was a looter caught by the collapse of the looters’ shaft or the tomb owner, dragged from the coffin.^[28]

Tomb 10 is a smaller square tomb with a passage, 13.3 metres long, in the west of the cemetery. Its chamber held a chariot, 15 horse skulls and an adult male in a coffin. Looters had not disturbed it. Among its finds are a complete set of silver horse ornaments and a jade sword ornament.^[29] The excavators date it to 66 to 130 CE, later than Tomb 189 and close to Tomb 1.^[30]

The man of Tomb 1

The genome of an adult male from Tomb 1 was published in 2018 and discussed again in a study of 2023. He was buried in one of the largest square tomb complexes excavated so far, with at least 27 satellite burials and with Roman glass bowls. The authors of the later study consider him a likely chanyu, a ruler of the empire.^[31] Their model draws about 39 per cent of his ancestry from the Slab Grave population of the Early Iron Age, about 52 per cent from a source related to Han China, and the rest from the Early Iron Age population of far western Mongolia.^[31] The article on archaeogenetics sets this result in its context, and the article on the chanyu treats the title.

Rank in the burial ground

At large and central cemeteries such as Gol Mod 2, the square tombs differ clearly from the circular graves in size, number and place in the burial ground.^[32] One study shows the plan of the Tomb 1 complex as its example of the late Xiongnu square tomb with accompanying circular graves.^[33] A hierarchy of cemeteries ranks Gol Mod 2 and Noyon Uul at the top, and the small grave groups of Egiin Gol at the bottom.^[34]

Attribution

The excavators call Gol Mod 2 a cemetery believed to be associated with the Xiongnu.^[1] A study points out that the culture of the large necropolises of Mongolia, which appeared around the first century BCE, is assigned to the Xiongnu empire of the Chinese histories. That assignment, it says, has yet to be demonstrated.^[35] The graves at Noin Ula raise the same question. The language of the people buried at Gol Mod is not known, and the finds do not settle it. The article on the Xiongnu gives the wider picture.

References

^ a b c d Miller 2006, p. 1
^ Erdenebaatar 2022, p. 196–197
^ a b Miller 2006, p. 1–2
^ a b c d e Erdenebaatar 2022, p. 196
^ Houle 2011, p. 139
^ Houle 2011, p. 152
^ a b c Miller 2006, p. 2
^ a b c d e Erdenebaatar 2022, p. 197
^ Houle 2011, p. 139–140
^ Houle 2011, p. 147
^ Miller 2006, p. 2–3, 14
^ Miller 2006, p. 3–4
^ Miller 2006, p. 2, 4, 14
^ a b Miller 2006, p. 5
^ Miller 2006, p. 8–9
^ Miller 2006, p. 9
^ Miller 2006, p. 9–10
^ Miller 2006, p. 10
^ a b Erdenebaatar 2022, p. 202
^ Miller 2006, p. 11
^ a b c Miller 2006, p. 11, 13
^ Miller 2006, p. 13
^ Bogdanov 2017, p. 8, 20
^ Erdenebaatar 2022, p. 194, 197
^ Erdenebaatar 2022, p. 200
^ Erdenebaatar 2022, p. 201–202
^ Erdenebaatar 2022, p. 203
^ Erdenebaatar 2022, p. 200, 203
^ Erdenebaatar 2022, p. 204–205
^ Erdenebaatar 2022, p. 206
^ a b al. 2023, p. 8
^ Miller 2014, p. 31
^ Miller 2014, p. 28
^ Wright 2009, p. 384
^ Cosmo 2011, p. 38

Literature

Bryan K. Miller; Francis Allard; Diimaajav Erdenebaatar; Christine Lee, A Xiongnu Tomb Complex: Excavations at Gol Mod 2 Cemetery, Mongolia (2002–05) (2006)
Diimaajav Erdenebaatar; Zhou Ligang; Lan Wanli; Liu Bin; Enkhbayar Mijiddorj; Baatar Galbadrah, The Results of the Study of Gol Mod-2 Site by the Mongolian-Chinese Joint Archaeological Research Team (2022)
Jean-Luc Houle; Lee G. Broderick, Settlement Patterns and Domestic Economy of the Xiongnu in Khanui Valley, Mongolia (2011)
Bryan K. Miller, Xiongnu “Kings” and the Political Order of the Steppe Empire (2014)
Juhyeon Lee et al., Genetic Population Structure of the Xiongnu Empire at Imperial and Local Scales (2023)
Joshua Wright; William Honeychurch; Chunag Amartuvshin, The Xiongnu Settlements of Egiin Gol, Mongolia (2009)
Evgeniy S. Bogdanov, The Origin of the Tamgas of the Xiongnu (2017)
Nicola Di Cosmo, Ethnogenesis, Coevolution and Political Morphology of the Earliest Steppe Empire: The Xiongnu Question Revisited (2011)