Fantastic Fauna from China to Crimea : Image-Making in Eurasian Nomadic Societies, 700 BCE-500 CE

Author:

Petya Andreeva

Publisher:

Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press

Publication year:

2024

Abstract:

Numerous Iron-Age nomadic alliances flourished along the 5000-mile Eurasian steppe route. From Crimea to the Mongolian grassland, nomadic image-making was rooted in metonymically conveyed zoomorphic designs, creating an alternative ecological reality. The nomadic elite nucleus embraced this elaborate image system to construct collective memory in reluctant, diverse political alliances organised around shared geopolitical goals rather than ethnic ties. Largely known by the term "animal style", this zoomorphic visual rhetoric became so ubiquitous across the Eurasian steppe network that it transcended border regions and reached the heartland of sedentary empires like China and Persia.

This book shows how a shared fluency in animal-style design became a status-defining symbol and a bonding agent in opportunistic nomadic alliances, and was later adopted by their sedentary neighbours to showcase worldliness and control over the "Other". In this study of enormous geographical scope, the author raises broader questions about the place of nomadic societies in the art-historical canon.

Table of Contents:

1. Introduction: At a Crossroads on the Eurasian Steppe Route
2. Design Idioms in Steppe Metalwork
3. The Tomb Inside Out: Playing (Mortuary) Politics
4. Animal Style in the Xiongnu Era: The Making of a New Elite
5. Waning and Re-emergence
6. Towards a Resolution