Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Inner Asia and the Spatial Politics of Empire: Archaeology, Mobility, and Culture Contact

Inner Asia and the Spatial Politics of Empire: Archaeology, Mobility, and Culture Contact

Honeychurch, William

Hardcover

AnthropologyArchaeologyGeneral Sociology

ISBN10: 1493918141
ISBN13: 9781493918140
Publisher: Springer Nature
Published: Nov 6 2014
Pages: 321
Weight: 1.42
Height: 0.75 Width: 6.14 Depth: 9.21
Language: English

This monograph uses the latest archaeological results from Mongolia and the surrounding areas of Inner Asia to propose a novel understanding of nomadic statehood, political economy, and the nature of interaction with ancient China. In contrast to the common view of the Eurasian steppe as a dependent periphery of Old World centers, this work views Inner Asia as a locus of enormous influence on neighboring civilizations, primarily through the development and transmission of diverse organizational models, technologies, and socio-political traditions. This work explores the spatial management of political relationships within the pastoral nomadic setting during the first millennium BCE and argues that a culture of mobility, horse-based transport, and long-distance networking promoted a unique variant of statehood. Although states of the eastern steppe were geographically large and hierarchical, these polities also relied on techniques of distributed authority, multiple centers, flexiblestructures, and ceremonialism to accommodate a largely mobile and dispersed populace. This expertise in spatial politics set the stage early on for the expansionistic success of later Asian empires under the Mongols and Manchus.

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