Medien

Vortragsmitschnitte

Sandra Wabnitz: Matters of Life and Death in Eurasian Steppe Peoples’ Societies, 4th-9th Centuries

The term ›Eurasian steppe peoples‹ conjures up a homogenous image of mounted warriors wielding bows and arrows and the famous Attila the Hun. However, the various peoples from the Eurasian steppe of the Pre-Mongolian era were more diverse than such stereotypes allow.


Though they left behind few, if any, written accounts themselves, through encounters on the fringes of the Eurasian steppe, they found their way into the records of literate societies. Confronted with a starkly different way of life to their sedentary culture, these historiographers’ reports shaped the stereotype of the nomadic mounted archer, which prevails in popular culture. However, on closer inspection, these authors also elaborated on the different customs of these newcomers—whether Huns, Avars, or Bulgars, to Latin and Byzantine authors, or Xiongnu, Xianbei, or Tujue, to their Chinese counterparts. Through a comparative cultural analysis of the surviving Latin, Byzantine and Chinese sources from the 4th to the 9th centuries, this lecture explores the depiction of the steppe peoples’ customs concerning matters of everyday life, looking beyond the stereotypical image of the bow-wielding mounted warrior.