Xiongnu

Tribal confederation of mounted nomads who dominated the Mongolian steppes during much of the Han dynasty and formed c 5th century BC. They dominated the area for more than 500 years. Their raids on the northern Chinese spurred the building of the Great Wall during the Zhou (Chou) period. Few archaeological remains are definitely assigned to the Xiongnu. Kurgans with horse burials excavated in Noin Ula are thought to be 1st-century AD tombs of Xiongnu nobility. Aristocratic burials in Liaoning province and in Mongolia have yielded a wealth of gold and silver objects. In 51 BC the Xiongnu empire split into two bands: an eastern horde, which submitted to the Chinese, and a western horde, which was driven into Central Asia. China's wars against the Xiongnu led to the Chinese exploration and conquest of much of Central Asia.

[Hsiung-nu]. A large tribal confederation of mounted nomads that dominated the Mongolian steppes during much of the Han dynasty. Formed near the end of the 3rd century bc, the confederacy reached the height of its power in the early 2nd century bc, when it defeated the Yuezhi. For the next two centuries the Xiongnu harrassed the northern frontiers of China. The Han empire defended itself by means of vast military campaigns alternating with diplomacy; the cost to China of either policy was staggering, the first in men and horses, the second in luxury goods and gold used to buy allies or an uneasy peace. Partly as a result of Chinese pressure the power of the Xiongnu declined during the 1st century BC and in the next century control of the steppes passed to other tribal groups. Few archaeological remains can be confidently associated with the The kurgans excavated in 1924-5 at Noin-Ula near Lake Baikal, robbed in antiquity, are thought to be 1 st-century ad tombs of Xiongnu nobility; silks and lacquers recovered from these tombs can be taken to represent the ‘gifts’ sent to the Xiongnu by the Chinese court. Aristocratic burials excavated more recently in Liaoning province at Xichagou and in western Inner Mongolia at Aluchaideng and Xigoupan have yielded an astonishing wealth of gold and silver objects unrepresented in the looted Noin-ula tombs. The metalwork from these burials firmly establishes Xiongnu art as a branch of the Animal Style with close relatives in the Altai mountains and the Ordos. The Xiongnu confederacy seems to have embraced a variety of ethnic and linguistic groups, but these remain little more than names recorded in Chinese sources. The Chinese historian Sima Qian (cl45-86 bc) gives a description of Xiongnu customs in many ways parallel to Herodotus’ account of the Scyths, but he does not clearly distinguish separate tribes and seems to use ‘Xiongnu’ as a blanket term for the northern barbarians of his own time and those of earlier centuries as well. Some doubt attaches to the hypothesis, suggested mainly by the similarity of the names, that the Xiongnu should be identified with the Huns who appeared on the frontiers of the Roman empire at the end of the 4th century ad. The racial composition of the Hunnish hordes is no less obscure than that of the Xiongnu confederacy, making it difficult to argue a connection on ethnic grounds; and while one typical Hunnish artefact, the bronze cauldron, has parallels in the Ordos, the negligible role played by the Animal Style in the material culture of the Huns contrasts sharply with what is known of Xiongnu art.