Beyond Myths and Ruins: Archaeology and Nomadism in the Russian Empire and the Early USSR 1850-1920s

This Dissertation is the first attempt to write a history of “nomadic archaeology” in late imperial Russia and the early USSR and chart its historical development. Drawing on analytical concepts from New Imperial History and post-colonial theory, it uncovers a de-centered, yet interconnected network of practitioners of “nomadic archaeology” or “archaeology of nomadism.The analysis in the dissertation is structured by the four cases of “nomadic sites,” discovered and identified as such by period actors, their interpretations, and ideological instrumentalization. Karakorum, the medieval capital of Genghis Khan’s heirs in Mongolia and the efforts of Siberian Regionalists (Oblastniki) to interpret its material culture are the subject of chapter 1. Chapter 2 concerns the discovery of the “nomadic site” of Khara Khoto in what is today Inner Mongolia, and the efforts of various actors, to construe it as a an object of “Russian national science.” Chapter 3 examines the ultimately unsuccessful efforts of professional historians working in what is today Ukraine and Southern Russia to integrate the material culture of the “nomadic site” of Verkhnii Saltov (Verkhnii Saltiv) into the emergent discourses of Ukrainian nationalism. Chapter 4 analyzes the site of Otrar, discovered in 1905 in what is today southern Kazakhstan. and explores the ways in which this site was interpreted by various local actors, including indigenous Kazakh intellectuals, in the colonial setting of “Russian Turkestan.” While each of the case studies solves its own set of situational questions, they are unified in that every group of the protagonists, or “node” that I examine as part of the unofficial, de-centered network of archaeologists of nomadism confronted, and resolved in their own unique way, what this dissertation identifies as the central paradox of nomadic archaeology. The paradox lay in the fact that nomads, while considered by dominant lay and contemporary discourses of the time to be “rootless” “atavistic” and “primitive survivals” of bygone eras, also existed as subjects of the contemporary and modernizing Russian Empire and early USSR. Secondly, the paradox stems from the fact that nomadic peoples, seemingly by definition, could not have left behind material culture in a specific place because of their “rootlessness.” Yet, the Dissertation demonstrates that throughout the period under consideration (1850-1920s) interest in the nomadic past only grew. The Dissertation argues that partially because of the two-fold paradox, the object of “nomadic archaeology” could be continuously redefined to suit situational problems and local issues pertinent to its practitioners, which accounts in part for nomadic archaeology’s continued popularity. Taken together the case studies demonstrate that the diversity of scholarly interpretations of nomadic archaeology in the Russian Empire and early USSR reflects the complex relationships and tensions between archeology and imperial societies undergoing liberalization and nationalization from above and responding to the rising subaltern nationalisms from below.