Ivolga is the best known of the fortified Xiongnu settlements. It lies in Buryatia, in the southern Siberian part of the Xiongnu country.[1][2] Russian archaeologists excavated it. Its inventory showed an economy more complex than the Chinese records suggest.[3]

The site

The settlement stood on a low terrace above the floodplain, at the confluence of two rivers. It measured about seven hectares and was enclosed by several ditches and a palisade.[1][2] The excavators opened part of it and found some 51 dwellings, most of them semi-subterranean, and hundreds of clay-lined pits and storage structures. In some of the dwellings, flues of stone slabs ran along the walls for heating.[1][2] The ceramics are of the Xiongnu kind, with wide-mouthed jars, flat-rimmed bowls and narrow-necked jars. Imported bronze mirrors suggest that the settlement was inhabited about 2,100 years ago.[1]

The economy

The animal bones come from sheep, goats, cattle, horses, pigs, fish and dogs.[1] A second list of the finds adds camels and yaks.[2] The plant remains include barley and wheat, and the second list names millet in addition. Sickles, grinding stones and digging tools lay among the finds.[1][2] The excavator concluded that the people lived in the settlement the whole year for many generations and that they lived by a mixed economy of farming and herding.[1]

The site also held craft workshops. They made pottery, carved bone and worked iron and bronze. One workshop had a furnace for smelting iron, with charcoal and slag.[4]

Place among the other sites

The excavators of Egiin Gol found the same kinds of pottery, plants and animal bones there as at Ivolga.[5] The same archaeologists later excavated two further settlements in Buryatia, Dureny I and II.[2] The question of Xiongnu farming rests largely on these settlements.

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g Wright 2009, p. 375
  2. ^ a b c d e f Houle 2011, p. 138
  3. ^ Houle 2011, p. 137–138
  4. ^ Houle 2011, p. 138, 150
  5. ^ Wright 2009, p. 384

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)

Related

What links here7

Institutions and Titles
Bone and Horn Working · Bronze Mirrors of the Steppe · Craftsmen in the Steppe Empires · The Economy of the Steppe Empires · Xiongnu Agriculture · Xiongnu Ironworking · Xiongnu Pottery

Cite this article

Yavuz, Emre-E. “Ivolga.” Turkic Atlas, revised 7 November 2026. https://turkicatlas.org/places/ivolga/

Last revised: 7 November 2026