Can there be anything more to be said about Uyghur identity? From culturalprimordial links with ancient mummies to a circumstantial politically based ethnicity, from a shifting locally rooted identity to one crystallized and homogenized by state policies, there can be few theories of ethnicity and identity that have not been applied in recent years to the peoples now commonly known as Uyghurs.1 Some of these theories are undoubtedly mutually exclusive, but many if not all have added something valuable to our understanding of not merely the ethnic, but the cultural, social and political identity of the Uyghurs.