ABSTRACT

In this chapter, I argue that the Iron Age Inner Asian horse pastoralists termed “Early Nomads” have been mischaracterized as “fierce warriors” in previous archaeological interpretations, reflecting academic paradigms which give primacy to dominance, hierarchy and a unidirectional tracking of interspecies influence. Utilizing ethno-ethological findings, I reevaluate the archaeological data to query if and how the smaller-scale mutual interdependencies and interpersonal adaptations that occur between humans and horses – and are necessitated to large measure by horses’ ways of being – might have influenced larger-scale social arrangements within these societies. When viewed through this lens, the archaeological material supports a broader view of these societies, with certain practices indicating a focus not upon militaristic expansionism, but rather upon defensive pacifism. I suggest these people witnessed – and mimicked – the cooperative, heterarchical manner in which their horses interacted with one another, modeling some of their human social structures and ideological schemes after horses’ ways of being. This case study shows that a consideration of interspecies intersociality, a perspective wherein animals do not merely accommodate human ways but also reciprocally influence those ways, can offer fresh interpretations of animals’ impacts on human cultures in the past and present.