Nomads, Past and Present

Inspired by the legends of Amazon women warriors told by ancient Greek historian Herodotus and evidenced by recent archaeological discoveries in Central Asia, Akmaral (Regal House Publishing, 2024) is the latest historical fiction novel by author Judith Lindbergh. Through the story of its eponymous main character, a nomadic warrior woman living in the Central Asian steppe in the 5th century BCE, Akmaral vividly brings to life the histories, cultures, and lifestyles of the ancient Sauromatae. In this episode, Judith joins me to talk about the Sauromatae, conducting historical research as a fiction writer, and what contemporary readers can learn about our current world through stories of the past. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In Photography and Making Bedouin Histories in the Naqab, 1906-2013:: An Anthropological Approach (Routledge, 2023), Emilie Le Febvre takes us to the Naqab Desert where Bedouin use photographs to make, and respond to, their own histories. She argues Bedouin presentations of the past are selective, but increasingly reliant on archival documents such as photographs, which spokespersons treat as evidence of their local histories amid escalating tensions in Israel-Palestine. These practices shape Bedouin visual historicity; the diverse ways people produce their pasts in the present through images.  The book charts these processes through the afterlives of six photographs as they circulate between the Naqab’s entangled visual economies – a transregional landscape organized by cultural ideals of proximity and assemblages of Bedouin iconography. She illustrates how representational contentions associated with tribal, civic, and Palestinian-Israeli politics influence how images do history work in this society. Here, Bedouin value photographs not because they evidence singular narratives of the past; rather, the knowledges inscribed by photography are manifold as they support diverse constructions of Naqab Bedouin history and society. In this episode, Emilie joins me to discuss the ethics of photographs of the Naqab Bedouin as a historical source; the nuances of gender norms around photographing Bedouin women; and how social media and modern technology have changed how photographs are used and understood. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Part Two of director Denis Villeneuve’s Dune films embeds viewers among the Fremen, the Indigenous inhabitants of the planet Arrakis. The sole source of the valuable drug spice, Arrakis has been colonized and its resources extracted by the Imperium. The Fremen fight to liberate themselves and their planet from Imperial control under the messianic leadership of Paul Atreides. In Frank Herbert’s original series of Dune novels, the Fremen were inspired by the Bedouin, nomadic pastoralist inhabitants of the Middle East. Aspects of Bedouin culture and lifeways as well as episodes from Bedouin history, such as the effects of resource extraction on Bedouin landscapes and Bedouin participation in the Great Arab Revolt, heavily informed the novels’ themes and narratives. In this episode, Dr. Kara Kennedy joins me to discuss representations of nomadic peoples in the Dune novels and their onscreen adaptations as well as her latest book Adaptations of Dune: Frank Herbert's Story on Screen (Blue Key, 2024). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Nicholas Morton’s The Crusader States and their Neighbours: A Military History, 1099-1187 (Oxford UP, 2020) explores the military history of the medieval Near East, piecing together the fault-lines of conflict which entangled this much-contested region. This was an area where ethnic, religious, dynastic, and commercial interests collided and the causes of war could be numerous. Conflicts persisted for decades and were fought out between many groups including Kurds, Turks, Armenians, Arabs, and the Crusaders themselves. Nic Morton recreates this world, exploring how each faction sought to advance its own interests by any means possible, adapting its warcraft to better respond to the threats posed by their rivals. Strategies and tactics employed by the pastoral societies of the Central Asian steppe were pitted against the armies of the agricultural societies of Western Christendom, Byzantium, and the Islamic World, galvanising commanders to adapt their practices in response to their foes.  In this episode, Nic joins me again to discuss histories of nomadic peoples fighting with and against the Crusader armies; what military history can tell us about the economic, social, and cultural history of the medieval Near East; and why Crusader history is still relevant to us today. Maggie Freeman is a PhD candidate in the School of Architecture at MIT. She researches uses of architecture by nomadic peoples and historical interactions of nomads and empires, with a focus on the modern Middle East. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Adriana Helbig's book ReSounding Poverty: Romani Music and Development Aid (Oxford University Press, 2023) offers a micro ethnography of economic networks that impact the daily lives of Romani musicians on the borders of the former Soviet Union and the European Union. It argues that the development aid allotted to provide economic assistance to Romani communities, when analyzed from the perspective of the performance arts, continues to marginalize the poorest among them. Through their structure and programming, NGOs choose which segments of the population are the most vulnerable and in the greatest need of assistance.  Drawing on ethnographic research in development contexts, ReSounding Poverty asks who speaks for whom within the Romani rights movement today. Framing the critique of development aid in musical terms, it engages with Romani marginalization and economic deprivation through a closer listening to vocal inflections, physical vocalizations of health and disease, and emotional affect. ReSounding Poverty brings us into the back rooms of saman, mud and straw brick, houses not visited by media reporters and politicians, amplifying the cultural expressions of the Romani poor, silenced in the business of development. Maggie Freeman is a PhD candidate in the School of Architecture at MIT. She researches uses of architecture by nomadic peoples and historical interactions of nomads and empires, with a focus on the modern Middle East. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The “barbarian” nomads of the Eurasian steppes have played a decisive role in world history, but their achievements have gone largely unnoticed. These nomadic tribes have produced some of the world’s greatest conquerors: Attila the Hun, Genghis Khan and Tamerlane, among others. Their deeds still resonate today. Indeed, these nomads built long-lasting empires, facilitated the first global trade of the Silk Road and disseminated religions, technology, knowledge and goods of every description that enriched and changed the lives of so many across Europe, China and the Middle East. From a single region emerged a great many peoples—the Huns, the Mongols, the Magyars, the Turks, the Xiongnu, the Scythians, the Goths—all of whom went on to profoundly and irrevocably shape the modern world.  Professor Kenneth W. Harl’s newest book Empires of the Steppes: A History of the Nomadic Tribes Who Shaped Civilization (Bloomsbury, 2023) vividly re-creates the lives and world of these often-forgotten peoples from their beginnings to the early modern age. Their brutal struggle to survive on the steppes bred a resilient, pragmatic people ever ready to learn from their more advanced neighbors. In warfare, they dominated the battlefield for over fifteen hundred years. Under charismatic rulers, they could topple empires and win their own. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Secret History of the Mongols is one of the literary wonders of the world. Writing in the thirteenth century, the Secret Historian - whose identity remains unknown - combines insider history and verse to chronicle the life of Chingghis Khan and the empire he founded. In an evocative new translation, Chris Atwood brings to life for contemporary readers the world of the Mongol steppe, the Mongol conquests, and life within the tent cities of the Mongol empire. In this episode, Prof. Atwood joins me to discuss what we know about the identity of the Secret Historian; the circumstances of the epic’s creation, reception, and transmission; how Mongol identity is constructed and portrayed in The Secret History; and his work as a historian and translator. Maggie Freeman is a PhD candidate in the School of Architecture at MIT. She researches uses of architecture by nomadic peoples and historical interactions of nomads and empires, with a focus on the modern Middle East. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the second half of the 19th century, both professional and amateur archaeologists, surveyors, and explorers of the “periphery” of the Russian Empire became increasingly interested in the perceived ancient nomadic histories of Siberia, Central Asia, and Ukraine. Their excavations of “nomadic sites” associated with the Scythians or the Mongol Empire were aimed not just at scientific investigation and scholarly inquiry, but were also born out of and contributed to discourses around modernity, race, ethnicity, and nationhood during the later days of the Russian Empire’s colonial expansion. Ismael Biyashev’s PhD research (University of Illinois-Chicago, 2023) charts the emergence, historical development, and global networks of the field of “nomadic archaeology,” examining how members of the Russian intellectual elite perceived and presented a nomadic past as a means of articulating contemporary Russian identity and visions for the future. For further open-access reading on this topic, see Ismael’s “Peripheral Histories” blog post here. Maggie Freeman is a PhD candidate in the School of Architecture at MIT. She researches uses of architecture by nomadic peoples and historical interactions of nomads and empires, with a focus on the modern Middle East. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In part two of our conversation about his book The Mongol Storm: Making and Breaking Empires in the Medieval Near East (Basic Books, 2022), Nicholas Morton, Associate Professor of History at Nottingham Trent University, joins me to share more about his research into Mongol imperial expansion and the Mongol conquests of the Near East. In this episode, we talk about practices of Mongol nomadism and mobility; how Mongol identity can be defined and understood; and where and when the Mongol empire finally collapsed. Part one is here.  Maggie Freeman is a PhD student in the School of Architecture at MIT. She researches uses of architecture by nomadic peoples and historical interactions of nomads and empires, with a focus on the modern Middle East. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“New Babylon” is an architectural and urban planning project designed by the Dutch artist Constant Nieuwenhuys between 1959 and 1974 in response to certain economic and social conditions he perceived to exist in the modern city: its emphasis on work and the production of capital, its highly-planned, gridded spaces.  “New Babylon” put forward an ideal city planning model in which people would be able to enter a state of what Constant called homo ludens, “men at play.” “New Babylonians” would be members of a leisure class, in constant movement in and between cities designed to be highly flexible, mobile, and to encourage a state of perpetual adventure and exploration. While “New Babylon” explicitly positioned nomadism as an ideal which should be embraced on a wider scale, the influence of an actual nomadic community on the design and conceptualization of the project has been largely overlooked. Namely, Constant drew heavily on interactions with and influence from Romani culture and heritage.  In this episode, Jérémie McGowan, whose PhD dissertation at the University of Edinburgh analyzed the Romani influence on “New Babylon,” joins me to discuss the ideologies underlying “New Babylon;” how Romani influences manifest in the project; and how and under what circumstances nomads can be either culturally idealized or vilified. Maggie Freeman is a PhD student in the School of Architecture at MIT. She researches uses of architecture by nomadic peoples and historical interactions of nomads and empires, with a focus on the modern Middle East. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the late 19th century, the Ottoman government sought to fill landscapes they legally defined as "empty." Both land and people were incorporated into territorially bounded grids of administrative law. Bedouin Bureaucrats: Mobility and Property in the Ottoman Empire (Stanford University Press, 2023) examines how tent-dwelling, seasonally migrating Bedouin in the Syrian interior engaged in these processes of Ottoman state transformation on local, imperial, and global scales. Narrating the lives of Bedouin individuals involved in Ottoman administration, Nora Barakat brings this population to the center of modern state-making, from their involvement in the pilgrimage administration in the 18th century and their performance of land registration and taxation as the Ottoman bureaucracy expanded in the 19th, to their eventual rejection of Ottoman attempts to reallocate the “empty land” they inhabited in the 20th. In this episode, we discuss categories and definitions of “bureaucrat,” “tent-dwelling,” and “tribe” in this context; longue durée shifts in Ottoman forms of governance in the Syrian interior and the role of Bedouin elites within Ottoman administration; and both Bedouin participation in and resistance to Ottoman state-making projects. Maggie Freeman is a PhD student in the School of Architecture at MIT. She researches uses of architecture by nomadic peoples and historical interactions of nomads and empires, with a focus on the modern Middle East. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ben Hoffler is the co-founder of several hiking trails in the Middle East, including the Sinai Trail, the Red Sea Mountain Trail, the Wadi Rum Trail, and the Bedouin Trail, which aim to boost and promote sustainable tourism and help conserve the endangered heritage of the Bedouin tribes who historically live in these regions and manage the trails today. In this episode, we discuss tourism as heritage preservation, overcoming negative stereotypes of regions like the Sinai, and how historically-nomadic communities like the Bedouin can benefit from tourism initiatives. Maggie Freeman is a PhD student in the School of Architecture at MIT. She researches uses of architecture by nomadic peoples and historical interactions of nomads and empires, with a focus on the modern Middle East. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Examining human-animal relations among the reindeer hunting and herding Dukha community in northern Mongolia, Embracing Landscape: Living with Reindeer and Hunting among Spirits in South Siberia (Berghahn Books, 2021), focuses on concepts of domestication and wildness from an indigenous perspective. Examining subsistence methods and lifestyle practices like hunting rituals and herding techniques in detail, Selcen Küçüküstel’s ethnographic account of contemporary lifeways and belief systems among the Dukha illuminates the dynamics between people, domesticated reindeer, and wild animals. Her research centers the role of the landscape in mediating and shaping human-animal interactions and encounters, capturing how the Dukha experience the landscape of the taiga as both their ancestral home and as a place with its own more-than-human agency. In this episode, we discuss the history of the Dukha, practices of pastoralism and hunting in northern Mongolia, the effects of contemporary political and environmental change on the Dukha, and Selcen’s methodological approach to her research as both a journalist and anthropologist. Maggie Freeman is a PhD student in the School of Architecture at MIT. She researches uses of architecture by nomadic peoples and historical interactions of nomads and empires, with a focus on the modern Middle East. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In his debut short story collection, Nomad, Nomad (Bound to Brew, 2021), Jonan Pilet explores the lives of Mongols and expats looking for a sense of home within the nomadic culture. Based on Jonan’s insights having grown up in Mongolia, the series of interlinked narratives capture the cultural turmoil Mongolia experienced after the fall of the Soviet Union, painting a vivid picture of Mongol landscapes, Western interactions, and the rise in cultural tensions. Maggie Freeman is a PhD student in the School of Architecture at MIT. She researches uses of architecture by nomadic peoples and historical interactions of nomads and empires, with a focus on the modern Middle East. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Between 1956 and 1960, leaders in the Mongolian People’s Republic embarked on a collectivization campaign to change the way in which Mongolians interacted with animals and the environment. Collectivization in Mongolia, which followed the Soviet model, confiscated private livestock to create collectively-owned and -worked livestock herds, and was seen as one of the building blocks of a modern socialist state. In a society where nomadic herders represented a large segment of the population, however, the process of collectivizing livestock herds took a different form than it did in other socialist contexts, and, post-socialism, many former leaders and collective members remember fondly the state of herding during socialism compared to the uncertainty that followed during the transition to capitalism.  In this episode, Dr. Kenny Linden joins me to share his research into the animal, cultural, and environmental history of livestock herding in socialist Mongolia and to discuss adaptations of pastoralism to socialist conditions. Maggie Freeman is a PhD student in the School of Architecture at MIT. She researches uses of architecture by nomadic peoples and historical interactions of nomads and empires, with a focus on the modern Middle East. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Nomadic Pastoralism among the Mongol Herders: Multispecies and Spatial Ethnography in Mongolia and Transbaikalia (Amsterdam University Press, 2021) is based on anthropological research Charlotte Marchina carried out between 2008 and 2016 to investigate the spatial features of nomadic pastoralism among the Mongol herders of Mongolia and Southern Siberia. In addition to classical survey methods, Charlotte used GPS tracking to analyze the ways in which pastoralists envision and concretely occupy the landscape, which they share with their animals, non-herders, and invisible entities and deities. In this episode, we discuss differences between pastoralism in Mongolia and Siberia, changes in Mongol herding throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, and how animals and animal knowledge of the landscape shape pastoralist systems. Maggie Freeman is a PhD student in the School of Architecture at MIT. She researches uses of architecture by nomadic peoples and historical interactions of nomads and empires, with a focus on the modern Middle East. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Saga Bougdaeva is the translator of the first English version of Jangar (University of California Press, 2023), the heroic epic of the Kalmyk nomads. The Kalmyks are the Western Mongols of Genghis Khan’s medieval empire in Europe. Today, Kalmykia is situated in the territory that was once the Golden Horde, founded by Genghis Khan son’s Juchi. Although their famed khanates and cities have long since disappeared under the sands of the Great Eurasian Steppe, the Kalmyks have witnessed, memorized, and orally transmitted some of the most transformative developments, both victorious and tragic, in the history of civilizations. A tribute to the protectors of the mythical country Bumba, Jangar reflects the hopes and aspirations of the Kalmyk people as well as their centuries-long struggle for cultural survival. Dr. Bougdaeva’s translation is more than a tribute to the artistic creativity and imagination of the Kalmyk people—it is also an important step in their struggle for cultural survival. It was only after centuries of oral transmission that the songs and stories surrounding Jangar were written down. When the first translation, into Russian, finally appeared, Stalin had the entire Kalmyk population deported to Siberia and ordered that their national literature be eliminated from the published world. This Soviet repression has had enormous consequences for world literature, silencing nomadic voices and keeping hidden their distinctive contributions. Maggie Freeman is a PhD student in the School of Architecture at MIT. She researches uses of architecture by nomadic peoples and historical interactions of nomads and empires, with a focus on the modern Middle East. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Dr. Kenny Linden, an environmental and animal historian of Mongolia and Inner Asia, joins me to discuss the Disney+ Star Wars prequel series Andor and its real-world parallels to pastoralism and the treatment of pastoralists in Central and East Asia by state authorities. We talk about nomadism in the Star Wars universe, depictions of nomads in pop culture, and the planet Aldhani in Andor as a reflection of modern histories of pastoralism and nomad-state relations in Central and Inner Asia. Maggie Freeman is a PhD student in the School of Architecture at MIT. She researches uses of architecture by nomadic peoples and historical interactions of nomads and empires, with a focus on the modern Middle East. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For generations, the composition and recitation of poetry has been a key mode of expression among Bedouin populations in the Middle East, reflecting social norms, religious practices, relationships with the natural environment, and tribal histories and politics. In Words Like Daggers: The Political Poetry of the Negev Bedouin (Brill, 2022), Kobi Peled, Professor at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, analyzes a corpus of poetry collected among the Bedouin of the Negev Desert over the past 100 years for themes of political resistance, dissidence, and reactions to the political changes facing the Negev Bedouin. The poems reveal how the Negev Bedouin responded to and perceived changes in state authority and rule from the late Ottoman period to the contemporary state of Israel. Peled argues that in addition to being a creative and artistic mode of expression, poetry and a close reading of Bedouin poetry can serve as a lens onto Bedouin worldviews, sentiments, and reactions to and participation in processes political formations and state-building undergone in the Negev region during the 20th century. Maggie Freeman is a PhD student in the School of Architecture at MIT. She researches uses of architecture by nomadic peoples and historical interactions of nomads and empires, with a focus on the modern Middle East. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Tibetan nomads have developed a way of life that is dependent in multiple ways on their animals and shaped by the phenomenological experience of mobility. These pastoralists have adapted to many changes in their social, political and environmental contexts over time. From the earliest historically recorded systems of segmentary lineage to the incorporation first into local fiefdoms and then into the Chinese state (of both Nationalist and Communist governments), Tibetan pastoralists have maintained their way of life, complemented by interactions with “the outside world.” In Pastures of Change: Contemporary Adaptations and Transformations Among Nomadic Pastoralists of Eastern Tibet (Springer, 2018), Gillian Tan, Senior Lecturer in Anthropology at Deakin University, identifies and analyzes the changes undergone by Tibetan pastoralist society in recent years, the sources of these changes, and the effects produced on Tibetan pastoralists, their lifeways, religious practices, and social structures. Drawing on long-term fieldwork that underscores an ethnography of local nomadic pastoralists, international development organizations, and Chinese government policies, Gillian argues that careful analysis and comparison of the different epistemologies and norms about “change” are vital to any critical appraisal of developments - often contested - on the grasslands of Eastern Tibet. Rapid changes brought about by an intensification of interactions with the outside world call into question the sustained viability of a nomadic way of life, particularly as pastoralists themselves sell their herds and settle into towns. Pastures of Change probes how we can more clearly understand these changes by looking specifically at one particular area of high-altitude grasslands in the Tibetan Plateau. Maggie Freeman is a PhD student in the School of Architecture at MIT. She researches uses of architecture by nomadic peoples and historical interactions of nomads and empires, with a focus on the modern Middle East. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices