ISBN Nomads and Networks : The Ancient Art and Culture of Kazakhstan book History English Hardcover 200 pages

The catalogue for the groundbreaking exhibition at New York University's Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, Nomads and Networks presents an unparalleled overview of the sophisticated culture of pastoral nomadic populations who lived on the territory of present-day Kazakhstan from roughly the middle of the first millennium BCE to the early centuries CE.
Focusing on material from the Altai and Tianshan regions, Nomads and Networks explores the specific conditions of mobile lifeways that resulted from particular ecological conditions in the steppes and high valleys of Inner Eurasia. Highlights of the exhibition are grave goods from the burial mounds at the site of Berel and gold mortuary ornaments from Shilikty, Zhalauli, and Kargaly. Attesting to a sophisticated decorative art flourishing among these nomadic populations, the objects skillfully combine older iconographic traditions of animal style in the steppe with more recent influences from foreign cultures--most notably Persia and China.
Contributors include Nursan Alimbai, Nikolay A. Bokovenko, Claudia Chang, Bryan K. Hanks, Sagynbay Myrgabayev, Karen S. Rubinson, Zainolla S. Samashev, Sören Stark, and Abdesh T. Toleubaev.
Sören Stark is assistant professor of Central Asian Art and Archaeology at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University. Karen S. Rubinson is a research associate at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University. Zainolla S. Samashev is director of excavations at Berel and head of the Astana branch of the A. Kh. Margulan Institute of Archaeology of the Republic of Kazakhstan. Jennifer Y. Chi is exhibitions director and chief curator at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University.