Universität Bonn

Since the 3rd century BC the Xiongnu are a steppe nomadic people who are mentioned in the Chinese written records. They appear as a political and military power on the northern frontier of the Han Empire, and they are soon recognized as a political entity. Until the 1st century AD when the Xiongnu were finally defeated and did not play an important role any more, the Han Empire tried to handle over quite a long period of time these nomadic barbarians with a “peace and kinship treaty”, which partially was an agreement to pay tribute to the Chanyu.

But who were those Xiongnu? And how adequate is the image shown in the chronicles? The archaeological record on the Xiongnu is still not so abundant in comparison with other regions in the early medieval time.

In the past Russia with its research in Buryatia contributed the most to the knowledge on the Xiongnu (Yu. Tal’ko Gryncevich, G. Sosnovskij, A. Davydova, P. Konovalov, S. Minyaev) and also set the stage for research on Xiongnu with the famous expeditions under P. Kozlov in 1925 to Noyon uul.

Since the past 10 years however, after the political turnover in the eastern hemisphere, research on the Xiongnu has increased tremendously in Mongolia – today there are about seven international expeditions researching on Xiongnu archaeology from France, Korea, Russia and the United States – and soon there will be more data available for the scientific community.

One of the expeditions in Mongolia longest involved in research on the Xiongnu is the “Mission archéologique française en Mongolie (MAFM)”, headed by J.-P. Desroches from the Musée Guimet in Paris. Since 2001 they conduct their research in the Arkhangay province at the site of Gol mod, located 350 km west of Ulaanbaatar.

In 2004 and 2005 the MAFM excavated a second aristocratic tomb (T 20). I joined the expedition in 2005 and together with my colleagues Guilhem André and Erööl-Erdene I am leading the excavations conducted in Gol mod. In 2005 we excavated the burial chamber of the princely Tomb 20 with several archaeologists, a restorer, a topographer and several students from Ulaanbaatar.

At the beginning of the excavations we found on top of the burial chamber (in a stone packing) a light Chinese chariot, which was probably dismantled before its deposition. In the burial chamber we excavated a second, lighter inner construction, in which the coffin was placed.