Империя Хунну

Further more, in many nomadic empires, there were special functioners of lower rank engaging in the support of the central power in the tribes. In the Hsiung-nu empire, such persons were named 'marquises' Ku-tu [Pritsak 1954: 196–199]. In the Turkish Khaganate, there were functioners designed to control the tribal chiefs [Бичурин 1950а: 283]. The Turk have also sent their governor-general (tutuks) to control the dependent people [Бичурин 1950b: 77; Материалы 1984: 136, 156]. Chinggis Khan, after reform of 1206, has appointed special noyons to control his relations [Козин 1941: § 243].

The nomadic empires as supercomplex chiefdoms are already real model prototype of an early state. If population of complex chiefdoms are as a rule estimated in tens of thousand people [see, for example: Johnson and Earle 1987: 314] and they, as a rule, are homogenous in the ethnic respect then population of multi-national supercomplex chiefdom make up many hundreds of thousand and even more people (nomadic empires of the Inner Asia have amounted to 1–1,5 million pastoral nomads) their territory (nomads, needed for a great are as of land for pastures!) was several orders greater than areas needed for simple and complex chiefdoms.

From the viewpoint of neighbouring agricultural civilizations (developed pre-industrial states), such nomadic societies have been perceived as the independent subjects of international political relations and, quite often, as equal in status polities (Chinese called them go). These chiefdoms had a complex system of titles of chiefs and functioners, held diplomatic correspondence with neighbouring countries, contracted dynastic marriages with agricultural states, neighbouring nomadic empires and 'quasi-imperial' polities of nomads.

The sources of the urbanistic construction (already the Hsiung-nu began to erect the fortes settlement whereas the 'headquarters' of the empires of Uighur and Mongols were true towns), construction of splendid burial-vaults and funeral temples for the representatives of the steppe elite (Pazyryksky burial mounds al Altai, Scythian burial mounds in Northern Black Sea Area, burial placed in Mongolian Noin-Ula, burial mounds of Saks time in Kazakhstan, statues of Turkish and Uighur Khagans in Mongolia etc.) are characteristic if them. In several supercomplex chiefdoms, the elite attempted to introduce the sources if clerical work (Hsiung-nu), in other ones, there was the epic history of people written down in runes (Turks), while there is a temptation to call some of the typical nomadic empires (first of all, Mongolian Ulus of the first decades of XIII century) the states. This is, in particular, supported by mentioning in Secret History of Mongols of the laws system (Yasa), legal organs of power, written clerical work and creation of laws (so called Blue book — Koko Defter Bichik) and by attempts to introduce a taxation under Ogbdei [Kradin 1995a]. However, one cannot forget that in the Hsiung-nu empire a specialized bureaucratic machinery and of elite's monopoly of legitimate application offeree. Just this circumstance provided a reason to interpret this society as supercomplex.