Fashion Theory

DOI: 10.1080/1362704X.2021.1991133
# 2021 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

Glittering Bodies:
The Politics of
Mortuary Self-
Fashioning in
Eurasian Nomadic
Cultures (700
Petya V. Andreeva
BCE-200 BCE)
Petya V. Andreeva is an Assistant Abstract
Professor of Asian Art and Design
History at Parsons School of Design. Non-sedentary cultures have existed on the scholarly fringes and his-
She studies body adornment and toriographical outskirts of the art-historical canon: there they remain to
image-making in the funerary art and this day, buried between dated opposites like “east” and “west,” “high”
design of early nomadic societies in
Central Eurasia. Her research and “minor” arts, torn by interdisciplinary tensions in art history,
explores the transmission of design archaeology and ethnography. Nomadic societies are usually considered
strategies and esthetic concepts in cross-cultural studies only insofar as they can act as sufficiently expe-
across the Silk Roads and other pre-
modern trade networks. dient intermediaries linking settled empires in the designated “East” and
andreevp@newschool.edu “West,” hence the recent fascination with the Pontic Scythians who bor-
dered, traded and fought with ancient Greece, or the Xiongnu whose
This article has been corrected with
minor changes. These changes do nomadic confederation became a geopolitical threat to early imperial
not impact the academic content of China. Yet, early pastoral nomads bordering China and Greece left
the article. behind a rich corpus of gold adornment which points to an elaborate
system of image-making and highly conceptual designs rooted in
zoomorphism. The following article focuses on the strategies of
2 Petya V. Andreeva

self-fashioning and funerary decor employed in the entombment of the

elite in the early nomadic societies of Central Eurasia. Golden suits,
composed of metonymically conveyed animal images, along with foreign
exotica, were the normative elements of a noble’s funeral. Adornment
had to showcase the elite’s life on earth as that of a daring, globally rec-
ognized politician and a proud steppe resident.

KEYWORDS: Eurasian nomads, body adornment, funerary art,

zoomorphism, audience, gold

Introduction

Since Iron-Age Eurasian steppe nomads did not leave behind any writ-
ing, they are most frequently viewed through the historiographical lens
of their geopolitical enemies and settled neighbors—China, Persia,
Greece—whose large-scale monuments are often erroneously perceived
as “archetypes” of the more portable objects produced in the nomadic
realm. Early nomadic visuality and esthetics are seldom examined out-
side the shadow of sedentary political actors. Nevertheless, Eurasian
pastoralists active between 700 BCE and the dawn of the first millen-
nium have left behind monumental barrows (“kurgans”) dispersed
across the five-thousand miles of Eurasian grassland. These sumptuous
burials, dominated by gold ornaments, felt and silk textiles, belonged to
members of the highest echelons of nomadic societies; it is therefore
unsurprising that their bodies were covered with as many as several
thousand gold plaques, buckles and other ornaments arranged in formu-
laic schemata. While the link between their material wealth and elite sta-
tus might be axiomatic, the optics and theatrics of such luxury burials
have vast theoretical potential which has not yet been fully studied.
Before delving any further, it is worth noting that it is nearly impossible
to offer a clear-cut definition of “elites” as they were understood by the
nomadic societies within which they existed. Indeed, due to the scarcity
and one-sided nature of historical sources on Eurasian nomads, the elites
that come up in Chinese or Greek texts, some of which will be refer-
enced below, are not necessarily the same elites that exist in the arch-
aeological record and whose material remains have inspired the present
study (Di Cosmo 2013, 23–53). But this paper is especially cognizant of
the distinction between middle-ranking warriors that only became elites
through military merit and the “super-elites” constituting the extremely
narrow core of the collective; it was the later that held the decision-
making power and whose burial curation was most crucial.
The following pages explore the zoomorphic imagery in the personal
adornment of Iron-Age Eurasian nomads. Incongruous, fantastic and frag-
mented, animal bodies defying modern anatomical conventions adorn the
funerary regalia and garments of the elite in nomadic alliances. This study
 Glittering Bodies 3

is not a pursuit of the meaning of these image systems—rather, it is their

function as a potent political tool that is of great interest hereafter. The
biggest epistemological value of nomadic imagery stems from their shared
function as metonymic substitutions of Nature, Self and one’s position
within the community’s inherently unstable elite core. Most zoomorphic
configurations adorned luxury portable objects which the early nomads
could easily transport in their structured movements between seasonal
pastures. Then, they chose to be buried in elaborate golden suits made up
of such zoomorphic ornaments. An overt emphasis on substitution domi-
nates the animal images on such adornment. A metonymic, pars-pro-toto
(or even pro-forma) mode of expression guides the image-making process
across the vast steppe domain—from the Mongolian steppe and South
Siberia all the way to Crimea. As I will observe later, a visual synecdoche
and extreme abbreviation in nomadic visuality are not mere stylistic
choices, esthetic proclivities or material affordances. Rather, such concep-
tual substitutions reveal more about their makers’ aspirations for political
leadership, communicated through a construction of what Ernst
Gombrich would have described as an inherently logical “sense of order”
(1979). In this case, the newly constructed biotic and visual “order”
turned into a specified rhetoric that was intelligible only to a small elite
nucleus that manipulated the collective memory of the whole alliance (or
what Wenskus would call “traditionskern”).1 Animal hybrids meant dif-
ferent things to different nomadic groups, but they persisted as expedient
visual tokens of elitism and divine leadership and were easily transferrable
across media and physical settings. Finally, the zoomorphic imaginaries
adorning the nomadic body bring us to the issue of audiences. Here, I am
not as much concerned with an afterlife audience as I am with the burial’s
real-life viewership whose agency as a co-orchestrator of the visual spec-
tacle should not be underestimated. Who was meant to see and appreciate
the glittering, bejeweled body of the dead noble before it was hidden
from worldly scrutiny for eternity? What political messages did the stra-
tegic adornment of the seemingly lifeless body carry via counterintuitive
zoomorphic images fashioned in gold? And what aspects of this visuality
can be attributed to the pastoral nomadic lifestyle and psychology of
mobility? These are the main avenues of inquiry that I pursue in the fol-
lowing pages.

Animal anatomies as substitutive allusions in

bodily adornment

Across the steppe domain, the bodies of deceased nomadic nobles were
embellished with gold headdresses, torques placed around the neck, and
smaller plaques and buckles that were attached to the garment. There
were regional and local variants and exceptions, but this decorative
scheme remained relatively formulaic and was widely shared across
the whole steppe domain. Such decorative gold ensembles have been
4 Petya V. Andreeva

discovered in various archaeological cultures in the period between

700 BCE and 300 BCE, most notably the Saka in Kazakhstan, the
Eastern Hu and Rong in north China, the Pontic Scythians of the
Black Sea and the early Sarmatians in the south Urals. Later, such
decorative traditions were continued or reconsidered by succeeding
nomadic alliances like the Xiongnu (3rd c BCE -1st c CE) in the
Eastern steppe and the later Sarmatians of the Pontic steppe (2nd c
BCE -1st c CE). Across these cultural spheres, only individuals from
the narrow elite core of the collective2 were buried in golden attire
and elaborate adornment schemata; some middle-ranking warrior-
herdsmen were interred with items of less noble materials such as
bronze or wood, and in less intricate configurations. The following
pages are primarily concerned with the adornment ensembles commis-
sioned by the ruling elite core whose visual rhetoric was meant to
communicate two primary messages: (1) Their ability to lead the col-
lective as individuals of superb political skills and economic acumen;
and (2) their desire to uphold an artistic vocabulary which celebrated
the ecology of the steppe and pastoralism as a way of life. By having
a certain assortment of objects, images and materials in his burial
regalia, and by displaying them to the rest of the community, the
deceased turned his listless body into praxis through which political
messages and processes were enacted. At the core of this visual rhet-
oric were tropes rooted in metonymic modes of expression.
These rhetorical devices are most pronounced in personal adornment
placed on the body before it was deposited in the tomb and permanently
concealed from the scrutiny of the world of the living. Substitution and
abbreviation were the image-making principles which came to define
various animal-based configurations. For instance, nomadic funerary
adornment features a curious composite fuzing the anatomical parts of
various animals. Conceptually, zoomorphic junctures are not uncommon
in the ancient world. Henri Frankfort studied a corpus of material
known as “Luristan bronzes,” which originated in the Iranian plateau
around 700 BCE: there, too, fishtails are made to end in ram’s heads,
antlers in birds and the body of one animal transitions into another,
thus forming a zoomorphic juncture (Frankfort 1970, 344–345).
Ancient Greece and Rome, and in fact most political entities in Classical
Antiquity also dissected and reconfigured their animal imagery, creating
monsters of mixed anatomy which offended the sensibilities of trad-
itional thinkers like Horace (Hughes 2010, 101). Yet hybrids in the
nomadic repertory possessed a set of special traits and enacted the body
they adorned in ways that were highly specific to the pastoral model
and indicative of one’s close interactions with steppe fauna. Let us look
at a classical example of a nomadic “zoomorphic juncture” fashioned
on a belt buckle.
The object in question (Figure 1) comes from a tomb near
Aluchaideng in Inner Mongolia dated to the Warring States Period
 Glittering Bodies 5

Figure 1
Gold Plaque with Tiger and Bird
from Kengjing Qi, Yi Meng.
Warring States.

(5th -3rd c BCE). The cemetery belonged to the nomadic group of the
Linhu (from Chinese: “forest barbarians”) who are briefly discussed in
the Chinese chronicle Shi ji (Records of the Grand Historian). The
“Memoir to the Xiongnu” chapter mentions a nomadic group inhabiting
the area of Aluchaideng, or, more precisely the Ordos Loop in north
China: “North of Jin were the Linhu and the Loufan, whilst north of
Yan lives the Donghu (Eastern Barbarians) and Shanrong (Mountain
Barbarians), each with their own chieftains. From time to time, they
would have gatherings of a hundred or so men, but no one tribe was
capable of consolidating the others under a single rule” (Watson 1971,
132). The Chinese historiography proceeds to tell us that the Linhu
were defeated by King Wuliang who ordered the construction of a great
wall starting from Tai at the foot of the Yin mountains; after that, the
Linhu nomads disappear from Chinese historiographies (Watson, 133).
However, several archaeological discoveries in Ordos afford us a better
look into the material and social lives of the nomadic group neighboring
early China.
At Aluchaideng, the bodies of two Linhu nobles were uncovered,
both fashioned in attire covered in golden ornaments (Tian and Guo
1980, 333–343). Shown below is one of the buckles sewn onto the
funerary garment: on it, one sees a counterfactual anatomical fabrica-
tion. The mode of expression is primarily metonymic: bird heads replace
the whole raptor and deer antlers stand for the deer, even the tiger is
not depicted in its entirety but instead transforms into the other two
species. In such a configuration, animals exist in a state of flux and
forms are mutable, interchangeable, inherently unstable. The final
6 Petya V. Andreeva

design is a fusion of separate visual synecdoches resulting in an

incongruous organism; the synthesis of body parts of different species
confronts anatomical and taxonomical conventions as none of the
animals are afforded their fully realized “animality.” Transposition,
abbreviation and pars-pro-toto are the underlying principles in this
conceptual design, and they remain such in nomadic adornment
across the Eurasian steppe. Not every object on the body of the
Linhu noble follows the exact same formula, of course: a pair of pla-
ques near the tiger-deer-bird composite consists of figures of more
realistically rendered porcupines, and another pair features beasts
entangled in combat (Zhonghua shiji tan yishuguan and Nei Menggu
Zizhiqu bowuguan 2004). But most of the animals on the funerary
suit are excessively abbreviated and unnaturally “inverted,” whether
depicted alone, in confrontation, or a state of metamorphosis. Most
notable is the “hybrid antler” terminating into bird heads, easily
noticeable in Figure 1. Here, the sense of transposition does not stem
only from the anatomical incongruity but also from the mismatch
between the preconceived and actual function of some body parts.
For instance, the tiger is expected to have a regular tail, which here
is substituted with the head of a bird. A similar example of a golden
hybrid was excavated from the Nalin’gaotu burial also located in the
Ordos Loop: on it, the same deer-bird antler appears, and a raptor’s
head stands for the animal’s tail (Dai and Sun 1983, 23–30). The
designer has successfully disrupted our ideation of the image and our
preconceived notions of animality, ontological categories, and part-
whole relations. Not only do the Ordos composites present a daring
alternative conception of biological and structural relationships but
they also confront and reimagine the everyday functions of organs
and body parts in ways that might be reflective of a rather particular
relationship with nature. One wonders if this is not, above all, an
issue of exercising control over the whims of nature to release one’s
anxieties about the unpredictability of the real-life beasts, which,
unlike these animated creations, could not be tamed with such ease.
The head of the deceased was adorned with a cap-like ornament
topped by a turquoise eagle and adorned with several incised animals
in predatory combat. This was likely a two-part ensemble consisting
of a headdress ornament (the cap) and a torque to be placed around
the neck (Figure 2). The torque’s terminals depict an equally contorted
and abbreviated species—a tiger, a ram and a horse.3 Along the axis
of the body, the individual tasked with preparing it for the burial
chose to emphasize the mutability and rearrangement of animal forms,
creating an imagined biotic order. Some of the items show signs of
wear, and they might have been worn by the deceased during his
mandate as a leader in the community and were thus not necessarily
manufactured for the burial alone (some however looked untouched).
The bird on the cap was attached by wires and moved together with
 Glittering Bodies 7

Figure 2
Head cap and torque from
Aluchaideng.

the head –it was perhaps worn as part of a celebratory procession of

some kind. The artisan who created each object, or the whole set,
was probably not the person responsible for the burial preparation.
But it was, it seems, the norm to embellish the corpse in curated sets
of counterintuitive, whimsical animal images, and thus create an alter-
native biota in which no species is what they seem—they are either
composites or about to transmogrify into new animals. In neighboring
nomadic cultures such as the equestrian peoples of the High Altai
mountains, zoomorphic junctures were depicted on tomb furnishings,
as well as on tattoos on the deceased’s body. The tattooing program
in particular underlines the principles in zoomorphism which were evi-
dently widely shared across the nomadic domain: animals are
abstracted, almost unrecognizable, and they appear in a state of
flux, transforming into one another (Figure 3). Through these animal-
themed tattoos, the buried chieftain turned his body into a
zoomorphic microcosm in celebration of his steppe heritage and the
ecology of the grasslands.
Most interesting is also the decision to create a composite which
combines the most characteristic, “signature” anatomy of each animal
cherished by the steppe inhabitants (e.g., deer-ness is denoted by ant-
lers). Then the owner of the object would have been in possession of a
“super-organism” of sorts: he alone was the master of a fantastic beast
whose animality was both novel and hard to control, because it could
harness the powers that each of the metonymically represented species
was known for. Alternatively, we can look at the synecdoche as a way
for the human maker to “curtail” the animal’s power by removing its
most essential anatomy or trait from the animal’s body and self. The
body of the dead noble, seemingly inactive, devoid of agency, became
the home of this newly imagined ecological reality full of anatomical
8 Petya V. Andreeva

Figure 3
Tattoo on the arm of a nomadic
chieftain. Pazyryk culture. 5-3rd
c BCE.
Image is used from www.
hermitagemusum.org, courtesy of
The State Hermitage Museum, St.
Petersburg, Russia.

incongruities and biological impossibilities, in turn meant to uphold his

status and divine agency during entombment.
The hybrids were meant to interact with the body they adorned and
with each other: no image existed in a vacuum. This is how golden suits
came to be: these were not strictly “suits,” as we think of them today,
but curated ensembles of hundreds or thousands of gold jewelry placed
strategically across the body. The Aluchaideng is in fact among the
modest examples of such ornamental suits—even more opulent ones
were excavated further west on the steppe.
 Glittering Bodies 9

Figure 4
(a) Reconstruction of the Issyk golden suit based on archaeological date. 5th c BCE, Kazakhstan. (b) Part of the Issyk golden suit.

Golden suits and glittering bodies

Passing by the embassy of Kazakhstan in Washington DC, one notices

the statue of a warrior with an elongated headdress riding onto a
winged snow leopard. A similar statue stands in the center of the
Independence Square in Almaty, the capital of Soviet Kazakhstan. This
warrior image has a long history dating back to the nomadic Saka who
inhabited most of modern-day Kazakhstan as early as the 7th century
BCE.4 The statues celebrate a 1969 archaeological discovery of an
undisturbed Saka grave in Soviet Kazakhstan: the finding of the famous
“Golden Man” (Kazakh: Altyn Adam) in Issyk, not far from modern
Almaty in southeastern Kazakhstan (Akishev 1978). The body was exca-
vated from a monumental barrow which reached 60 meters in diameter
and 6 meters in height (Akishev 1978). Inside the grave, on a wooden
floor a young warrior-noble, said to be between 18 and 25-years old.
More than four-thousand gold objects decorated his body (Figure 4a).
These gold buckles and plaques are made in a variety of metalworking
techniques, including hammering, stamping, engraving, soldering, cold
gilding, polishing, granulation, paste and tar encrustation. Some of the
small animal figurines were made of wood and covered with thin gold
leaf afterward. The torque and other larger items are hollow. The result-
ing image is that of a sculptural, massive, opulent suit which is easily
able to reflect any external source of light due to gold’s natural reflectiv-
ity and its amassed quantity. I distinctly remember the suit’s visual
impact in the National Museum in Nur-Sultan where its stands today:
the body possessed a “sparkling” quality, being able to catch and trans-
form even the dimmest light source into a breathtaking spectacle.
10 Petya V. Andreeva

The headdress alone contains 150 pieces and dominates the adorn-
ment scheme. The hood’s front was decorated with composite fantastic
animals, combining horses with winged caprids on opposite sides of a
central axis. On top of the hybrids is an arrangement of gold feathers,
arrows, wing-like motifs, along with vertical golden objects with a
painted pattern (Jacobson 1993, 76). Around the hood’s sides and back
were positioned plaques of coiled animals and winged felines, feline
heads, trees topped by birds in profile. Finally, the top was adorned
with a standing mountain sheep. The suit’s decorative scheme then
unravels in a downward fashion. Its mid-section is embellished with
composite beasts exhibiting the hybrid antler motif seen at Aluchaideng
(Figure 4b). Several buckles show images of highly stylized deer with
abstracted antlers, some terminating into raptor beaks. On the sleeve
hems and leggings are attached several mask-like zoomorphic orna-
ments. The back of the headdress includes shapes of mountains and riv-
ers, perhaps in a mimesis of one’s biota: stylized snow leopards with
excessively curved bodies appear in the midst of these heavily abstracted
mountains. Here emerges a hierarchy of strategically positioned forms,
some echoing each other in rhythmic sets and accentuating parts of the
body. There is also a noticeable design “verticality”: the zoomorphic
forms unravel downward, along a well-delineated vertical axis.
The Issyk find is not the only example of such golden suits. Variants
are found across Kazakhstan and in other parts of the Eurasian steppe
domain (the Aluchaideng case certainly counts in that category).
Currently, there exist at least five separate Golden Men and Women
unearthed across present-day Kazakhstan, not of all whom were part of
the same nomadic society—some in fact belonged to a later group active
in the 2nd c BCE known as the Sarmatians. It should be noted here that
Saka, Scythian, Sarmatians, along with virtually all exonyms applied to
early nomadic groups, are umbrella politonyms which do not necessarily
reflect the collective identity of the actual nomadic peoples. In the order
in which they were discovered, these “Golden People” are: (1) the
Araltobe Golden Man (2nd c BCE, found near the border with Russia
in western Kazakhstan, 400 gold objects), (2) Baigetobe Golden Man
(7th c BCE, Chilikty valley, Eastern Kazakhstan, 4303 gold objects), (3)
Golden Men and Women of Taldy II (7th -6th c BCE, 200 gold objects),
(4) Golden Woman of Taksai (Western Kazakhstan- Ural region, 6th -
5th c BCE, 80 gold objects), and (5) Golden Man of Eleke Sazy (Eastern
Kazakhstan, 7th c BCE), discovered in 2018. The latter is currently on
view at Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambrdige, as part of the “Gold of the
Great Steppe” exhibition in 2021.
Among these, the only female grave is that of the “golden woman”
at Taksai, located at a greater distance from Issyk and closer to the Ural
Mountains near western Kazakhstan. This region was once inhabited by
the early Sarmatians, a people of Indo-Iranian stock described by
Herodotus as having emerged from intermarriages between Scythian
 Glittering Bodies 11

men and Amazons (Histories 4.21). Soviet-period archaeological work

has indicated four phases in the development of the Sarmatians that
ultimately supplanted the Scythians across Eurasia: the earliest centers
of Sarmatian activity overlap the Taksai area. Gold suits completed in
the manner observed at Issyk abound in the most elite of Sarmatian bur-
ials, particularly from phase two (5th -4th c BCE) and three (2nd s
BCE–2nd c CE). Indeed, the “golden woman” at Taksai was probably
of Sarmatian origins. It is unsurprising that this is a female suit because
Sarmatian women have been consistently described by Greek and
Roman historians as warlike. Here is, for instance, what Hippocrates
says about them (The Genuine Works of Hippocrates, 1868):

Their women, so long as they are virgins, ride, shoot, throw the
javelin while mounted, and fight with their enemies. They do not
lay aside their virginity until they have killed three of their
enemies, and they do not marry before they have performed the
traditional sacred rites. A woman who takes to herself a husband
no longer rides, unless she is compelled to do so by a general
expedition. They have no right breast; for while they are yet
babies, their mothers make red-hot a bronze instrument
constructed for this very purpose and apply it to the right breast
and cauterize it, so that its growth is arrested, and all its strength
and bulk are diverted to the right shoulder and right arm.

The image of the golden female warrior from Taksai gives a no less
awe-inspiring impression to its viewer (Figure 5a). The high-ranking
woman was buried with two female guardians (Lukpanova 2017, 145).
She was covered by a blanket embroidered with golden plaques. Next to
the body, archaeologists found gold jewelry, cosmetic boxes, and frag-
ments of what had once been a lavishly decorated headdress. Overall,
eighty gold ornaments were found inside the burial; some had visible
signs of wear and tear indicating that perhaps they were not made spe-
cifically for the burial (it is more difficult to establish this with much
certainty for the rest of the golden suits in Kazakhstan). The decorative
formula remains unchanged: an elongated headdress is placed on top of
the head, followed by a torque wrapped around the neck, which then
points downward to the rest of the suit embellished sporadically with
gold zoomorphs (Figure 5b). The terminals of the torque, like those at
Issyk, are animal heads. The placement of composite, schematically ren-
dered animals on the headdress, topped by a single realistically depicted
animal, is similar to the visual arrangements at previously examined
headpieces from the region further east along the Chinese northern per-
iphery (Aluchaideng) and the neighboring Altai mountains (Pazyryk).
Along a well-delineated vertical axis, the artisan would have placed fly-
ing birds and a highly stylized tree (possibly a reference to the omnipres-
ent Tree of Life5 motif) surrounded by horned ungulates—an
12 Petya V. Andreeva

Figure 5
(a) Golden Woman of Taksai, 6th -5th c BCE. (b) Golden Woman of Taksai, detail.

exaggerated, enacted design verticality is enacted yet again. At its core,

the decorative formula from Issyk is preserved and readjusted ever so
slightly. This is also the decorative scheme observed on the from Golden
Man from Taldy II and Baigetobe, exhibited in the National Museum in
Nur-Sultan: there too, a bird head elongates the headdress while smaller
zoomorphic or other abstract images are dispersed throughout the body
(Figure 6).
One can only imagine the visual spectacle generated by the sheer
amount of gold that embellished the deceased body as it was carried to
the monumental barrow. The moments before the body was placed
inside the grave and thus forever hidden from the critical view of the
world must have been essential to the enacted performance. Gold is a
metal of a very low reactivity and a high reflectivity, malleability and
durability. The message was perhaps that just like gold, the deceased
leader’s agency would never rust. The patron was more concerned with
the appearance of eternal power, rather than the actual physical preser-
vation of the body: indeed, two-thousand years later, the skeletal
remains found were meager, but the adornment was intact. Meanwhile,
the maker also made full use of gold’s affordances. The artisan deliber-
ately placed emphasis on the optics of transformation and fluidity along
a well-defined axis or across the body itself, often decorating the figure
in a “horror-vacui” fashion. The thousands of gold plaques and buckles,
 Glittering Bodies 13

Figure 6
Golden man of Baigetobe.

topped by the elongated multi-layered headdress, would have effectively

reflected sunlight during the body’s movement as it was carried across
the community. Here, it might be worthwhile to consider the writings of
the medieval Arab scientist Alhazen (965–1038 CE) whose findings in
the field of optics had a great influence on artists in the European
Renaissance and the Islamic world. In his “Book of Optics,” he pro-
posed that the center of optical activity in the perception of an object
was the object itself, which, when illuminated, produced rays of light in
every direction. He correctly refuted Galen and Ptolemy’s theory that
our eyes emit rays and simply act upon objects and showed that it was
in fact the other way around. Alhazen demonstrated how our eyes were
affected by light but do not affect light: one is blinded when staring dir-
ectly at the sun, and one continues to “see” an afterimage of a bright
14 Petya V. Andreeva

object once they close their eyes (Lindberg 1967, 321–341). This revis-
ited concept of “seeing” has been considered in studies of painting and
monumental architecture which play with optical illusions, but it has
even greater relevance to smaller funerary objects of high reflectivity.
Assuming that the funeral’s audience was standing in an open-air space
around the monumental barrow, two possible outcomes can be confi-
dently inferred: a. they would have been dwarfed by the monumental
structure and b. their eyes would have been greatly affected by the
optics of 4000 gold ornaments of peculiar designs which reflected rays
of sunlight and activated the surface of the body. Some kurgans (par-
ticularly those in the Crimea) reach as high as 60 meters; as such, their
monumentality sets the stage perfectly for the premediated performance.
Such gold “suits” were also common in the adornment of horses,
although this practice was not as prevalent in the eastern steppe. In the
equestrian Pazyryk culture of the Altai mountains in the Siberian perma-
frost, anywhere between seven and twenty-two horses were laid flat on
the chamber’s floor were commonly seen next to the coffin. A recon-
struction of the Berel burial (Fig) shows the close proximity of the sacri-
ficial horse to the interred humans, in this case a man and a woman of
power (Samashev 2011). Horses of the Pazyryk nomads often wore a
horned or antlered mask, along with gold trappings, felt saddles and
other ornaments. Two examples are shown here. Most of the smaller
trappings placed on the horse’s body depict zoomorphic junctures or
masks, some echoing the images reflected on the person’s body. The
decision to use zoomorphic masks as adornment for sacrificed horses is
worth further consideration. The mask conceals his horse-ness, disrupts
his fully-realized animality and adds a layer of ambiguity to his presence
in the tomb’s spatial parameters– the horse himself has become a com-
posite, just like the horse-tiger-bird beast from Aluchaideng. This con-
cealment of the horse’s identity has a dramaturgical, staged quality to it,
perhaps enhanced by the supine position and meticulously folded legs.
Even the decoration of the felt saddlecloths mimics the widely shared
zoomorphic visuality of the steppe. In each group, only one horse has
an actual goat-horn mask, while the rest wear a zoomorphic ornament
on their foreheads. In other Pazyryk burials, horses have deer masks
(Figure 7).
Why was such a theatrical staging of the horses necessary? Horse
bodies appear to have been re-imagined and reenacted, deprived of their
usual function. They themselves were meant to resemble composites.
Why add this biological ambiguity to a much-revered animal? The
equestrian community at Pazyryk, located in the permafrost of the Altai
in South Siberia, relied heavily on horse-riding and animal products;
horse-breeding enabled Pazyryk nomads to maintain a higher mobility
than many other pastoral groups in the region. One possibility brings us
back to Gombrich’s notion of zoomorphic junctures and masks serving
as talismanic protectors meant to repel potential evils. Indeed, one often
 Glittering Bodies 15

Figure 7
Sacrificial Horses at Berel,
Kazakh Altai region. 5th c BCE.
Reconstruction in the National
Museum in Nur-Sultan.

wears a mask to conceal their identity, often from the unwelcome gaze
of another, or in order to delude one’s audience. The masks and horned
headdresses at Pazyryk could have acted in place of protective spells,
confusing and warding off unwanted spirits. Another, and in my mind
more plausible, scenario is that the tomb occupant and his family com-
missioned a space within which horses could be harnessed and con-
trolled. Taking away their “horse-ness” would have reestablished their
proper place in a rigid human-animal hierarchy in which humans com-
mand the animals, not the other way around. Fully realizing the inex-
plicable whims of nature, nomads in harsh environments like Siberia
would have wished to be in full control of all of nature’s creatures,
including powerful horses whose bodies were reimagined, almost carica-
tured in an alternative biota. Recent works on horse-human relation-
ships in post-humanist discourse remind us that the human-horse
relationship was bidirectional, based on processes of reciprocal adjust-
ment and attunement (Gala 2016). For both the human rider and the
ridden horse, learning how to ride properly takes a long time of mutual
adjustment, synchronization and “skill-matching” (Gala 2016). As such,
more seasoned riders are paired with younger horses, and vice-versa;
this would have certainly been the practice in a developed
equestrian pastoral society like Pazyryk. Horses also possess a great per-
ception of detail and patterns in their environs and can lead the human
rider out of danger. Yet humans also kill horses for their meat, in battle,
for sacrifices etc. As animals used in cavalry across Central Eurasian
empires, horses could also be immensely dangerous and powerful. This
agency was at the heart of a symbiotic yet occasionally uneasy
16 Petya V. Andreeva

relationship between horses and their human owners, and one can easily
imagine just how essential this relationship must have been in a pastoral
society. It was important that the deceased staged the burial to showcase
his cultural and economic capital. He had the monetary wealth exempli-
fied by the stallions, and he had the power to mask and un-mask them
at his will: to the burial’s audience, horses had to be portrayed as allies
to the deceased, but also as his subordinate species, which he could eas-
ily tame even after his passing. Once again, the deceased was the master
of a carefully curated ecological universe. If one could harness the
powers of all these whimsical beasts, one was a leader with divine skills
and authority, distinct from the qualities of the ordinary members of the
collective—all of this needed to be convincingly demonstrated in front
of a real-life audience as the burial took place.
An important question looms unanswered here: what portion, if any,
of these gold ornaments were manufactured specifically for the burial and
thus taken out of circulation and thus detached from their economic value
in the world of the living? Archaeological analysis has not been able to
determine this with certainty, although one can assume that the majority
of the Taksai ornaments were indeed used at least a few times before
being deposited whereas most of the Berel ornaments continue to look
like new. No texts can give us a glimpse into the actual vogue in the pas-
toral societies, and we can only speculate to what degree the mortuary
self-fashioning reflected or rejected norms in everyday wear. It is likely
the case that at least parts of these ensembles were commissioned for the
burial while some of the deposited items had been worn during special
celebrations in the person’s life. Either way, each precious ornament
would have been manufactured with its potential mortuary role in mind.
To fully understand the presumed needs and demands of this audi-
ence, which seems to have been central to the patron’s decision-making,
one must also consider what other objects were placed together with the
deceased. The golden suit was evidently not deemed sufficiently power-
ful on its own—its visuality had to be further enacted through other sets
of objects and esthetic systems put in place simultaneously.
Complimentary to the suits were the horses whose bodies were adorned
in a similar fashion, but no less strategic were the foreign luxuries which
the elites took with them in the final resting place. The following section
studies such imports.

Otherness in tomb decor

In the nomadic world, self-fashioning and mortuary d
ecor frequently

made use of foreign items produced outside the nomadic realm. The wom-
an’s burial from Taksai stands out with the implementation of a foreign
object that would have been deemed “exotic” in the local community.
Inside the grave was a wooden comb with a battle scene depicting human
figures engaged in combat (Figure 5). Both sides of the comb are decorated
 Glittering Bodies 17

with images depicting a chariot facing a single-footed warrior in full

armor. The realistic, epic scene points to West Asian artistic conventions
and indicates that the comb was a gift or booty from the Achaemenid
Empire (550–330 BCE), once a sworn enemy of the Scythians and Saka
nomads according to Herodotus’ account in Histories. Indeed, the depic-
tions of the men, particularly their headdress, echo the human figures rep-
resented at the Apadana Palace in Persepolis. Why incorporate a foreign
item which is seemingly detached from the rest of the nomadic decorative
schema? The woman could have commissioned any number of items to be
manufactured for her burial and this wooden item was one of the least
expensive items in her burial inventory.
In nomadic burials, the patron often incorporated an object or design
element from a far-flung territory that was widely recognizable by the
collective as an enemy or long-distance trade partner. The tomb occu-
pants wished to appear worldly and active on a global stage and so they
found ways to exhibit their wide network of connections and interac-
tions with foreign cultural spheres and economic centers. This was not a
mere sign of vanity. To a leader of an inherently unstable and reluctant
alliance of militant clans, it was most likely a matter of long-term polit-
ical survival. A high-profile burial would have been scrutinized by
friends and rivals alike, and it was more important than ever that he
showcased the global accomplishments of his mandate before the col-
lective made up of various rival clans. Items from the alien and
potentially dangerous “outside” were not only signs of status, but also
clout-markers and marks of one’s bold dealings with unknown peoples
and places in the name of service to the community. The objective was
to ensure a relatively smooth transition of power upon his passing.
To further understand this practice, one could again turn to the
equestrian nomadic culture of Pazyryk. What sets this funerary cluster
apart from other steppe discoveries is the overwhelming number of tex-
tiles excavated there. They were preserved in a remarkable condition
because once robbers entered the tombs in antiquity, water penetrated
the chamber forming a protective ice layer. Recent scientific work has
enabled researchers to reach tentative conclusions regarding the origin
of production of these dyes and materials: for instance, the wool used
for the clothes of the Pazyryk tomb occupants was consistent with the
wool of sheep native to the Altai region. A few dyes were derived from
specific plants which have now been identified as madder, indigo and
tannins.6Other dyes were derived from animals, thus further strengthen-
ing our understanding of these communities’ interactions with fauna.
Liquid chromatography, mass spectrometry, scanning electron micros-
copy offer unprecedented glimpses into the origin and making process
of the textiles (Simpson and St. John, 169). The tomb chambers were
covered in carpets, celling and wall hangings, and the horses with elab-
orate saddlecloths. The textiles were of diverse origins. Some were most
likely locally produced. They were not only made of felt, a preferred
18 Petya V. Andreeva

Figure 8
Saddlecloth. Felt with
appliques. Pazyryk
Barrow no.5.
Image is used from www.
hermitagemusum.org, courtesy of
The State Hermitage Museum, St.
Petersburg, Russia.

Figure 9
Felt saddle cover, Pazyryk.
Image is used from www.
hermitagemusum.org, courtesy of
The State Hermitage Museum, St.
Petersburg, Russia.

animal-derived product in nomadic communities, but also featured

abbreviated antler motifs, echoing nomadic visual tropes (e.g. meto-
nymic representation). Figure 8 exemplifies a local textile—a saddlecloth
is decorated with antler configurations alluding to the presence of
deer—a typical visual synecdoche. A similar configuration is found on a
fragment of a felt covering featuring images of mouflon heads (Figure
9). Other saddles are adorned with scenes of animal combat or
 Glittering Bodies 19

Figure 10
Iranian saddlecloth. Pazyryk. Felt, wool and gold foil.
Image is used from www.hermitagemusum.org, courtesy of The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia.

intertwined animals in applique on a felt base, once again in line with

nomadic esthetics.
A few of the textile interred at Pazyryk, however, are likely imports
or local products made to resemble foreign ones. A case in point is the
saddlecloth shown below, which came with a breastplate decorated with
rows of lions (Figure 10). The borders feature processions of pairs of
women holding their hands up in a likely gesture of prayer or vener-
ation often required in supplication ceremonies. Rudenko suggests an
Assyrian source for this image, drawing evidence from similar depictions
of women in worship processions on bas-reliefs from the palace at
Nineveh in Kuyunjik as well as on golden plaques from the Oxus treas-
ure (Rudenko, 296). The cloth is devoid of animal forms; instead, the
focus is placed exclusively on the female figures. The same saddlecloth
also contains a chest strap showing a procession of lions. The strap had
a felt base onto which the artisan would have sewn a tapestry band
framed by geometric shapes. The lions are illustrated with their jaws
wide open; their shoulders are marked by the “dot and comma pattern”
often observed in animal images in Persian art. The image program here
is no longer dominated by a zoomorphic repertoire—the focus shifts
toward human images which is uncharacteristic of nomadic art. These
textiles were likely obtained by the Pazyryk inhabitants through trade
with West Asia. Even if they were in fact produced by local makers,
20 Petya V. Andreeva

they were supposed to recreate Iranian imagery which the nomadic arti-
sans had clearly seen and studied.
The last case in point among the foreign inventory at Pazyryk comes
in the form of a carpet—in fact, the oldest pile carpet in human history.
The rug had originally been spread around the chamber floor
(Figure 11). The walls had been draped with felt hangings which, due to
the plundering, were found on top of the carpet. The piece was tied
using the technique of the symmetrical double Turkish knot (3600 to
the square decimeter) and as such, the pile is very dense. It has five bor-
ders divided into narrow bands of squares. The widest border contains
twenty-eight horse riders, each seated on a colorful, intricately decorated
saddle cloth. The men’s postures alternate as they are depicted both
walking and mounted on horses. The depiction is somewhat reminiscent
of the Apadana reliefs in Persepolis where riders are depicted walking
alongside their horses: perhaps some local adjustment of the original
Persian image took place here. The spotted fallow deer illustrated on the
inner frieze of the carpet is an animal characteristic of the fauna of
South Siberia and Transcaucasia (Rubinson 1990, 49). In light of this, it
can be deduced that the textile was produced locally by artisans seas-
oned in felting who were also familiar with foreign artistic vocabularies
and iconographies and wished to emulate foreign goods and themes.
Toward the end of the 3rd century BCE, as nomadic power was
becoming more and more consolidated in Central Asia and especially
dangerous along the north Chinese frontier, elite nomadic burials started
to feature foreign textiles and goods more frequently in the interior
d
ecor of the tomb. Now, nomads wished to fashion themselves differ-
ently than they did in the past: they needed to detach from the
“warrior-herdsmen-plunderer” label and take their proper place in the
global political and economic networks. Nowhere is this newly crafted
image more noticeable than in the Xiongnu alliance (3rd c BCE-1st c
CE) which formed along the northern Chinese periphery, eventually
turning into the first nomadic empire and biggest geopolitical threat to
Han China. The Xiongnu cemetery at Noin ula is a telling example.
Like Pazyryk, the inventory of the largest barrow belonging to the
leader included a felt carpet with nomadic pictorial motifs, including
pairs of confronted animals from the steppe repertory (elks, deer and
griffins), but the edges of the textile in question were lined with Chinese
silk appliques indicating contact with their southern neighbor. Silk
appears more frequently than felt across the larger (elite) barrows at
Noin ula. Moreover, many of the silk textiles used as coverings for vari-
ous mortuary surfaces feature Chinese designs and artistic motifs. For
instance, they depict swirl or cloud patterns and meandering shapes
reminiscent of Han-dynasty (3rd c BCE -3rd c CE) tomb art, where
such pictorial motifs are seen frequently in various tomb inventories. A
notable parallel comes from the 2nd-c BCE funerary complex of
Mawangdui near modern-day Changsha in Hunan province (Hunan
 Glittering Bodies 21

Figure 11
Oldest pile-carpet in the world.
5th -3rd c BCE. Pazyryk,
South Siberia.

Sheng Bowuguan and Chen 2008) (Figures 12 and 13). Another trad-
itional Chinese funerary motif, the “money tree” 搖 錢 , makes an
appearance on a painted silk fragment from barrow no.12 at Noin-Ula.
While Eastern Han tombs (1st–2nd c CE) from southwest China
(namely Sichuan) abound in bronze money trees with pottery bases, at
Noin-Ula the object is painted onto the silk fragments; further Chinese
references on the same textile can be seen in the allusions to the
“lingzhi” 靈芝 magical mushroom with nine stalks (in the right portion).
Other silk fragments abound in the rest of the Noin-Ula inventory and
were most likely produced in Chinese imperial workshops and then
traded or gifted to the Xiongnu nomads.
The inhabitants of Noin-Ula also had extensive contacts with the
Yuezhi people and Gandaran communities in South Asia. A second
group of textiles indicates that exchanges with the northern Indian sub-
continent and Asia Minor took place in the community of Noin-Ula.
The material of presumed Bactrian, Gandharan or Parthian manufacture
can be summarized as follows: 1. three carpet fragments from tomb
no.31 illustrating a sacrificial ceremony (192  100 cm) and a battle
scene (133  100 cm); 2. another fragment (270  153 cm) from tomb
no.31 depicting a seated ruler; 3. a fragment from the aforementioned
22 Petya V. Andreeva

Figure 12
Silk covering, Noin-Ula, 1st c
BCE -1st c CE, Mongolia.

Figure 13
Silk brocade, tomb of Lady Dai,
Mawangdui, Western Han
dynasty, 2nd c BCE.

tomb no.6 depicting dismounted riders and 4. a small fragment from a

wall hanging showing an Indo-European man’s face (Yatsenko 2012,
39–48). One of these textiles came to light only recently, and features a
supplication ceremony of some kind, perhaps a reference to Zoroastrian
rites which were then common in parts of South Asia and Iran (Figure
14). The textile in question was found on the floor of the burial pit in
tomb no.31 at Noin ula (Polos’mak 2015). The fabric depicts a proces-
sion of male warriors, likely of Zoroastrian origin, toward a stepped
altar with a flame emanating from the top. A male figure waits at the
altar with his hand raised above the flame as if in observation of a
 Glittering Bodies 23

Figure 14
Fragment of the carpet with ritual scene (detail). Noin ula no.31, 1st c BCE -1st c CE.

sacred ritual. Another man wearing a belted tunic stands on the oppos-
ite side of the altarpiece holding a mushroom in his left hand.
Considering the ritual formality of this scene and the presence of a fire,
the mushroom could have been used in the making of a divine, psyche-
delic substance. Scholars have identified it as the ceremonial preparation
of the mystic soma (haoma), a possible reference to which also appeared
on the Pazyryk wall hanging of a seated female personage (Polos’mak
2010, 2015). Substances which stimulate the nervous system were in
fact very common among people not only in the Mongolian steppes but
also in the Western Regions. The earliest evidence comes from the
Yanghai and Subexi Cultures of the Jushi 車師 Kingdom in the Turpan
Basin in the first millennium BCE (Mallory and Mair 2008, 143).
The dismounted riders next to the flame invite parallels with coins
minted in northwestern India ruled by a dynasty identified as Indo-
Scythian, subjugated by the Kushans in the 2nd c BCE (Yatsenko, 43).
The depiction likely refers to a Zoroastrian religious practice making
use of a fire altar, a prevalent ritual amongst Zoroastrians in Iran and
India. Moreover, the gold needlework and heavy threading, coupled
with the red-off-white color palette are characteristic of contemporan-
eous products in West Asia or possibly north India.
Some Hellenistic traces are also found in the Noin-Ula inventory. A
phalera made from the medallion of a Hellenistic-style cup was found in
barrow 20 (Treister 2016, 22). Based on a similar silver phalera discov-
ered at Galiche in modern-day Bulgaria and a few Pontic hoards, it
might have been manufactured in a workshop in Asia Minor or the
Black Sea region and sold to markets further east (Treister 2016, 23).
The precise origin of this and the other foreign items interred at Noin-
Ula is not of direct bearing here. It is vital that the burial program was
24 Petya V. Andreeva

carefully curated to include d
ecor that was manufactured in places well

outside the immediate reach of local leaders.
One would notice that there are only occasional references to the
traditional “animal style” of the early nomads: by the late Iron Age,
elite pastoralists were starting to fashion their final resting places and
bodies differently than their predecessors. The Pazyryk and Golden
People’s barrows, where foreign items are not as prevalent, predate
those at Noin-Ula by at least two centuries. As they managed to
strengthen their political clout in the Central Asian region around the
3rd c BCE, nomadic leaders opted for foreign elements in their burial
programs on a more regular basis. This is a pivotal shift in self-fash-
ioning which occurred gradually starting from the 5th, becoming
most apparent in the late 3rd century BCE. As has been stated in Di
Cosmo’s seminal work on the relationship between early China and
its nomadic enemies, it was not until the 3rd century BCE (209 BCE)
that a rigid political boundary formed between China and the so-
called “north” with the formation of the Xiongnu empire (Di Cosmo
2001, 45). As a highly opportunistic economic relationship, along
with a military one, developed between China and the northern
nomads, the makeup of the tomb inventories changed, too.
Fantastical zoomorphic designs were no longer the sole underlying
principles in the decorative program. Instead, a nomadic leader
wished to show his peers and the rest of the community that he had
managed to expand his international network, that his daring and
creative vision and political acumen had turned the nomadic alliance
into a powerful global actor that could obtain skilled craftsmanship
and luxury exotica from distant places. Through long-distance trade
with far-flung places like Bactria or even more familiar cultures like
the Chinese dynastic domain, the chieftain and other members of the
narrow core of ruling elites would have demonstrated their leadership
qualities not only to their peers and equals but also to the whole col-
lective present at the funeral. Additionally, luxuries acquired through
long-distance trade, diplomacy or battles could have been selectively
conferred upon the middle-ranking warriors who did not quite consti-
tute the ruling elite core (e.g., had limited political authority) but
were closer to that nucleus than the rest of the collective.
How does one account for this desire to showcase long-distance
trade, or, more broadly, one’s increasingly expansive network of
Eurasian connections? Mary Helms has demonstrated that individuals
who engage in long-distance trading and acquisition of skilled crafts-
manship do so to demonstrate their qualities of a superb political leader
before the rest of the community (Helms 2013). They are elected in a
position of power precisely because they dare to deal with the
“outside”, that is, the chaotic, unstructured, potentially dangerous forces
of the “Other” and unfamiliar societal dynamics. The burial had to
acknowledge the foreign battles won and lands conquered, the trade
 Glittering Bodies 25

deals made, and international relations forged by the leader during his
life of service to the community. The burial had to exhibit foreign
objects, and ones from places of strategic interest to the collective.
Scholars often romanticize this as “cultural exchange.” I would suggest
that the selection of a foreign element in fashioning the body (and the
tomb’s spatiality) was much more pragmatic and strategic than a term
like “exchange” would indicate. The foreign object was a token of
“governable Other-ness”—the “exotic” on the “outside” was now fully
tamed, controlled and inscribed into the familiar format of the locally
understood nomadic ceremony. Such objects were never allowed to
dominate the ensemble and were rarely placed in a central place on the
body or tomb interior; they were merely implied to enhance one’s
impression of the leader’s momentous accomplishments, already con-
veyed by the massive amounts of gold. Global standing and contact
were important but needed to be controlled and never overstated—a
nomadic tomb remained the realm of the warrior-herdsmen and proud
inhabitant of the steppe who also happened to conquer or converse with
external powers and places. He was as much the master of the alterna-
tive super-biota curated for the burial as he was the master of global
trade, diplomacy and war.

The omnipotent audience

The assertion that the audience is a co-creator in self-fashioning is apo-

dictic. But in discussions of mortuary art and design, one rarely consid-
ers the pragmatic implications of a real-life audience (as opposed to an
imagined, afterlife one). Indeed, most studies of ancient funerary cul-
tures have focused almost exclusively on the intangible, afterlife audi-
ence, and one’s passage and appearance before it. But to consider the
burial as a response to the imagined needs of that audience alone would
be erroneous. Real-life viewership, and its demographic, were no less
significant determinants of the funerary spectacle. The body and its sur-
rounds were fashioned in accordance with the presumed conventions
established by the elite core and agreed upon by the larger collective. As
such, self-fashioning had to respond to the needs of the audience and
consider its make-up. In Book IV of Histories, Herodotus tells us more
about funerary rites in his discussion of the Pontic Scythians: “In the
open space around the body of the king they bury one of his concu-
bines, first killing her by strangling, and also his cup-bearer, his cook,
his groom, his lackey, his messenger, some of his horses, firstlings of all
his other possessions, and some golden cups; for they use neither silver
or bronze. After this they set to work, and raise a vast mound above the
grave, all of them vying with each other and seeking to make it as tall
as possible” (Book IV, Ch. 71; Rubinson 1975, 16–20). He specifically
mentions the community’s collective effort to build a monumental bar-
row—it was, he postulates, an obligation that even turned into a
26 Petya V. Andreeva

contest. The preparations of entombment became part of the commun-

ity’s newly built collective memory that was ever so important in a
reluctant nomadic alliance in which certain social positions and clan
agreements were often renegotiated. Herodotus also narrates how the
body itself is prepared for the burial: “they take the king’s corpse, and
having opened the belly, and cleaned out the inside, fill the cavity with
a preparation of chopped cypress, frankincense, parsley-seed, and anise-
seed, after which they sew up the opening, enclose the body in wax, and
placing it on a wagon, carry it about through all the different tribes …
the body of the dead king is laid in a grave prepared for it, stretched
upon a mattress”. Much of Herodotus’ description has been confirmed
by archaeology, with very few exceptions, and he was most likely cor-
rect that the body was carried around and had to be viewed by all dif-
ferent clans, many of whom were in reluctant alliance with the ruling
clan of the deceased. The death of a leader in such an unstable alliance
would have most certainly opened a power vacuum and shaken the elite
core. Of course, Herodotus was most likely referring only to the
Scythians that bordered Greek colonies like Olbia. Even so, the Pazyryk
and most Kazakh burials of the closely related Saka follow many of the
same funerary conventions, and their golden, bejeweled bodies were
likewise lavishly decorated for the scrutiny of friends and rivals alike.
Elaborate burials enacted an image that communicated as much to the
living as to the dead, no matter how briefly the contents were exposed
to view (Bradley 2009, 233). This was even more vital in nomadic alli-
ances, in which the psychology of mobility sustained through seasonal
passages and forced migrations also allowed for faster fragmentation
and renegotiation of the alliance and its elite core.
To understand the role of the audience in fashioning the noble
nomadic body, it might be useful to turn to Erving Goffman’s macro-
sociological analysis of the audience in everyday human experiences
(Goffman 1956). He views all communication as a performance through
a dramaturgical lens (Goffman, 11). To establish one’s social identity,
whether on an individual or group level, one constructs a “front” which
acts in a fixed fashion before the audience observing the performance.
The front allows others to understand and trust the individual based on
projected character traits with normative meanings. As a “collective rep-
resentation,” the front establishes proper “setting,” “appearance,” and
“manner” for the social role assumed by the actor (Goffman 1956, 27).
Deviation from the established front endangers the performance and
jeopardizes the actor’s place within the social network he or she repre-
sents. Especially relevant to our discussion is Goffman’s “team” defined
as a grouping of people who construct a collective front before a shared
audience (Goffman 1956, 51). All team members become accomplices in
the maintenance of a well-crafted performance (a “dramatic realization”
of sorts); they recognize each other as people “in the know” since they
cannot genuinely maintain the same front before each other. Their bond
 Glittering Bodies 27

is this “behind the scenes” knowledge which acts as an impermeable

boundary between them and the audience. Such was also the tie that
held together the “elite core” of a nomadic society: the elite shared a
goal to maintain the sanctity and wholeness of that unstable core, and
thus preserve their own position in it (this position became precarious
after another member passed away). The audience at the receiving end
of their premediated performance (the funeral) was the rest of the col-
lective which was able to examine the fashioned body and curated mor-
tuary space. This was not the time for a compromise with skilled
craftsmanship, conceptual design, and monetary value: at such a
momentous event, an unconvincing performance would have jeopar-
dized one’s membership in the core and welcomed the possibility of its
restructuring. Entombment defined the deceased’s agency one last
time—but that “last act”, to stick to in Goffman’s dramaturgical terms,
could not deviate from the collective’s pre-approved formula. The
tomb’s d
ecor and natural surroundings became the scenic aspect of the
“front,” and they were equally impressive and monumental. The bejew-
eled body was at the heart of a funerary spectacle turned into a political
theater. Its optics and theatrics were a non-verbal argumentative practice
aimed to convince the audience of the deceased’s worthiness, dedicated
service and natural leadership qualities, in the hope that no drastic
changes in the current leadership would take place. The performance
ended when entombment was complete, and the body no longer vulner-
able to the audience’s scrutiny.
Philosophers like Christopher Tindale have argued in favor of the
epistemological potential of the audiences, considered crucial to the con-
struction of rhetorical practices (Tindale 2018). Tindale points out:
“Argumentation has a dynamic nature to it, with arguers and audiences
wedded in an active relationship of exchanges to such a degree that the
audience provides much of the content of the discourse because they are
so central to the context” (Tindale 2018, 4). In nomadic burials, the vis-
ual rhetoric of the ruling elite was defined by three primary features: 1.
the overwhelming visual presence of accumulated gold in the form of an
ensemble, 2. the metonymic, counterintuitive, and thus conceptually
intricate zoomorphic imagery enacted by the body, and 3. the implemen-
tation of foreign items in the burial. All of this was commissioned to
demonstrate that his was a life of dedicated service and superb (glo-
bal) leadership.

Conclusions

The visual and material evidence examined in this study shows that the
Eurasian nomadic elite had a remarkably detailed, formulaic conven-
tions in self-fashioning in their entombment practices. The adorned
bodies and their surroundings became a rhetorical space which commu-
nicated political messages to the rest of the diverse nomadic alliance. In
28 Petya V. Andreeva

the hope of maintaining the alliance’s structure in place, the deceased

projected the image of a proud master of the steppe ecological domain,
and a successful actor on the global political stage.

Acknowledgements

The research was supported by a fellowship from the India-China

Center at the New School and the Penfield grant from the University of
Pennsylvania Board of Trustees.

Notes

1. Reinhard Wenskus developed the theory of Traditionskern (kernel

of tradition) to describe the small nucleus of military elite in
Germanic tribes during the Migration Period in Europe. This elite
core set the standard for forming and maintaining alliances, and
they alone controlled their collective memory, often falsely
claiming that all tribes in the union originated from a
common ancestor.
2. The term “collective” is used here to refer to a nomadic alliance of
diverse clans, which was often opportunistic, reluctant and based on
a common enemy or economic objective.
3. A remarkably similar horse image exists in the earliest nomadic
complex in Central Eurasia—the cemetery of Arzhan in Tuva
(South Siberia).
4. The image inspires many couture collections on the contemporary
fashion scene of Kazakhstan.
5. The tree recalls the Persian Gaokerena, or Tree of Life, which, in
many Zoroastrian myths was identified as the haoma plant, the
source of an immortal elixir. According to the Avesta, the haoma
plant has roots, stems, and many branches; it is tall and fragrant
and can sometimes personify a deity called Duraosa.

ORCID

Petya V. Andreeva http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5719-0226

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