Karakorum, the first capital of the Mongol world empire: an imperial city in a non-urban society

Cities within a steppe environment and in societies based on pastoral nomadism are an often overlooked theme in the anthropological literature. Yet, with Karakorum, the first capital of the Mongol Empire (AD 1206–1368), we have a supreme example of such a city in the central landscape of the Orkhon valley in Mongolia. In this paper, we ask, what is the city in the steppes? Taking Karakorum as our starting point and case of reference and to attain a better comprehension of the characteristics of urbanism in the steppe, we apply a list of urban attributes compiled by Michael E. Smith (2016) to provide a thick description of Karakorum. The discussion not only comprises comparisons to other contemporary sites in Russia and Mongolia, but also addresses in detail the question of city–hinterland relations as a fundamental necessity for the survival of the city in an anti-urban environment. The analysis shows that during the Mongol period we can identify urbanism but no urbanization: there is no process of independent, natural growth of cities carried out by the population, but cities are “political” in the sense that they are deeply intertwined with the authority and have therefore much to tell about the relation between power and authority on the one hand and the ruled on the other.

A buried past: five thousand years of (pre) history on the Jing-Wei floodplain

The Jing-Wei Floodplain, located in Shaanxi, China, has been home to various groups of people over the last 5000 years. Drawing together evidence from archaeology, paleobotany, geomorphology, climate sciences, and history, this paper provides a longue durée study of the local (pre)history of human occupation in this area with a special focus on human adaptation strategies and environmental history. In particular, the study summarizes and evaluates archaeological and geomorphological field research conducted over the last ten years and connects it with often overlooked local historical accounts and recent climate research in the Wei River Valley and observations on recent economic developments and their impact on both the environment and the people living in it. In spite of a rather long hiatus in occupation from the second century BCE to the twelfth century CE, the evidence shows that there are close similarities in human-environment relations and even continuities into the modern period. Though being a highly localized study, this paper can serve as an example for how such longue durée studies may be conducted in other regions, and it provides some suggestions for future field and laboratory research.