Religious and Ritualized Landscapes of Iron Age Central Eurasia

Summary

Culturally diverse peoples variously glossed as Scythian, Saka, and Xiongnu lived in northern central Eurasia throughout the Iron Age (ca. 1,000-100 BCE). Archaeological sites of this time period range from kurgans (burial tumuli), mortuary complexes called khirigsuur, standing stelae termed "deer stones," settlements, and metallurgical centers. There is a long-term life history within the places in which these structures and monuments were built, general patterns in their spatial distribution. Placement of these monuments and structures were intentionally and meaningfully utilized, people journeyed between locations, and interacted with their built and natural environment. These places are further linked together by the presence of a distinctive iconographic style, termed Animal Style Art. Patterned usage of this iconography is representative of widespread religious ideas and beliefs; physical representations of conceptual metaphors and symbolic systems. A complementary relationship between places that are meaningful and the symbols depicted within, and those depicted on artifacts and as tattoos on individuals buried within highly ritualized locations, such as the Altai Mountains, are further expressions of religious conceptual metaphors. These concepts are demonstrated by conducting spatial analysis on distributions of symbols depicted on Scythian, Saka, and Xiongnu material culture, monuments and structures throughout central Eurasia.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• Untangling the Intangible: Reconstructing Ideologies, Beliefs, and Religion in the Past

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