Subject: Speaker Series - Emma Hite, April 8th, 5:30 pm, American Corner- Natsagdorj Library

ACMS Speaker Series

The Baruun Mukhdagiin Am (BMA) Archaeological Project: preliminary results and future directions for research on the Xiongnu Empire”

Speaker: Emma Hite is a 2013-2014 Fulbright IIE Research Fellow and doctoral candidate in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Chicago

 

5:30 PM, Tuesday-April 8th, 2014, American Corner, ULAANBAATAR
Main entrance of Natsagdorj Library.


 

At the end of the Late Iron Age, herding communities in Mongolia organized into the first steppe empire in recorded Inner Asian history: the Xiongnu (Hunnu).  Scholars place the Xiongnu at the beginning of a long, tumultuous cycle of the rise and fall of mobile steppe empires made world-famous by Genghis Khan (Chinggis Khaan) and the Mongol Empire.  Recent research suggests that an underexplored aspect of the Xiongnu Empire – its nomadic herding lifestyle – may have been a key element in its emergence over 2,000 years ago.  The Baruun Mukhdagiin Am (BMA) Archaeological Project is a joint US-Mongolian archaeological expedition aimed at understanding a local community within the Xiongnu Empire through the lives and deaths of its human and animal constituents.  The BMA Archaeological Project builds off of pilot research directed by Dr. Zagd Batsaikhan (National University of Mongolia) at the main Xiongnu cemetery at BMA in 2006 in a multidisciplinary effort to examine the burials, campsites, and wider cultural landscape of this Xiongnu community.  The preliminary results of the BMA Archaeological Project’s 2013 field season of mapping and survey helped resolve initial research questions and shape future research objectives for our team, including plans for the 2014 field season.  A broader goal of the BMA Archaeological Project is to increase understanding of herding and stock-raising communities in prehistory and to help the modern global community understand and value mobile pastoralism as a lifeway in the 2nd century BC as well as in the 21st century in Mongolia and beyond.

 


 
About the Presenter  

 

Emma Hite is a 2013-2014 Fulbright IIE Research Fellow and doctoral candidate in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Chicago.  She has been working on joint US-Mongolian archaeological projects in Mongolia since 2005 and is now a co-director of the Baruun Mukhdagiin Am (BMA) Archaeological Project with Dr. Zagd Batsaikhan (National University of Mongolia) and Galdan Ganbaatar (Institute of Archaeology, Mongolian Academy of Sciences).  She is currently conducting dissertation research in Mongolia and planning the 2014 field season at BMA.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For more information visit the ACMS website
www.mongoliacenter.org

Thank you to the American Corner and the Natsagdorj Library for sponsoring this event.

American Center for Mongolian Studies, 642 Williams Hall, 255 S. 36th St, Philadelphia, PA 19104, United States
You may unsubscribe or change your contact details at any time.