КОЧЕВНИКИ СРЕДНЕВЕКОВЬЯ поиски исторических закономерностей

The need for new territories for pasture and battue hunting made warriors of the nomads, for no people would cede their territory voluntarily. Nomad invasions were aimed at the seizure of a territory through the complete or partial annihilation of its population. In some cases part of the conquered people would be incorporated into the nomad community. The invasions involved the entire nomad population, men, women, children, old and young (young women joined the ranks of mounted warriors) with their herds and tents. At this stage termed «military democracy" by the classics of Marxism, the socio-political structure took the form of conglomerations of the tribal-union type, usually led by active members of influential and rich clans, one of which had initiated the invasion.

As a rule, the armed drive for new lands originated in a limited steppe region and was the result of events that made it inevitable. Most of the population mounted their horses or followed the warriors in covered carts, carrying with them their property and leading their herds. At the start, the population usually belonged to one ethnic and linguistic group compact enough to be considered an ethnic community, but one in a state of constant division into related ethnic groups.

Such detached groups began to roam the steppe on their own in search of «vacant» territory, i. е., occupied by a military weaker ethnos. The advancing hordes would, on their way, conquer, ruin and absorb parts of tribes and eth-noses. Thus, the prerequisites were created for the formation of a new ethnic community, and, above all, of a new socio-political conglomeration. The same applied to material culture: every group was a bearer of the «material cul-ture» which practically disappeared in the long and tortuous wanderings, hard-fought battles and cultural assimilation. Only military innovations which had brought victories to the conquerors remained unchanged.

A new syncretic culture was formed, a blend of many disparate cultures and influences.

What remains to the archaeologist of the early nomad culture? This multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, multi-lingual conglomeration of tribes and hordes, tied into tribal and horde unions by their leaders, continuously roved the vast hostile steppe. They had neither permanent winter camps where cultural layers may be found nor permanent clan burial grounds. Usually they buried their dead in mounds, common in steppe, left over from previous epochs (the so-called secondary burials), or in thoroughly concealed ground burials. The custom of concealing burials was followed by the nomad nobility up to the 13th century. The tabor period has left the archaeologist single burials in the steppe, seldom intact, which one can come across only by chance, though precisely these burials yield interesting information: different burial rites testify to patchy ethnic patterns; «equal» burial complexes (with the exception of the gold-covered burials of chieftains) testify to the prevalence of the military democracy.

There is no doubt that this stage was common to all the nomadic peoples of the Eurasian steppe. Unfortunately, historical sources concerning the nomads at this initial stage are of a scanty, fragmentary and, very often, distorted character: an avalanch of nomads destroying everything on its way gave rise to hatred and horror, rather than ethnographic interest.

The seizure of new lands was followed by adjustment of relations with the conquered tribes and neighbouring states and peoples. This ushered in the next period, a «pe-riod of finding a new homeland", and this entailed economic development of the seized territory. Pasture lands were allotted to each tribe and clan, according to their sizes, and permanent seasonal camps were established. At first, the alloted territories were large, accomodating a large, usually consanguineal collective. It was called kuren by B. Ya. Vla-dimirtsov and the corresponding economic type — kuren economy. The rise of the kurens marked the beginning of the decay of the clan-tribal society. This process started within the framework of the military democracy and further developed in the early class society.

Consolidation of class relations, the impoverishment of common nomads and the concentration of wealth in the hands of individual families, led to the division of the kuren communities into smaller economic units. The first to leave the kurens were the rich families with their kinsmen and large herds. These smaller economic units are termed ails. Very often the ails were also fairly large as rich families were joined by poorer ones. Having not enough cattle to roam by themselves, poor people pastured the caltle of the rich, receiving payment in kind or, which was an important development, changed over to agriculture.