
HORSEPOWER
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Interactions between China, Mongolia and the steppe 2000-0 BCE
HORSEPOWER UPDATE
OCTOBER 2024
Just back from the dusty landscapes of Mongolia and the mind-bending vastness of everything in China, and memories are still vivid - from the horse herds on the steppe to the otherworldly terracotta warriors.
It’s the second year of the Horsepower Project and there’s progress in all kinds of ways.
We’ll be sharing details over the coming months but here’s my quick take on a few strands.

Photo credits: Rory Carnegie
Horse sacrifice in ancient Mongolia
This is a subject that produces amazed reactions from people who hear about the project – “you mean, they really killed hundreds of horses?” Yes, and in the stunningly beautiful Upper Orkhon Valley a batch of horse skulls has just been excavated from a type of burial site known as a khirigsuur.
Around 80 were unearthed from the same site last year and slightly more this year in what’s shaping up to be the most comprehensive study so far of an important but mysterious burial practice from 3,000 years ago.
The archaeological work was led by Ursula Brosseder and Turbat Tsagaan. A hard-working team of students opened up the so-called ‘satellite mounds’ in which the horse skulls were buried – these are arrayed in long rows around on a much larger mound for whoever was buried here, presumably a leader.

It was impressive to see each skull being carefully and respectfully isolated from the soil and then measured and photographed. Most are aligned to face the south-east. The petrosal bones – the densest part of the skull in which DNA is likely to be best preserved – were packaged to be sent off to Ludovic Orlando’s lab in Toulouse.
Ludovic and his team can work out the horses’ coat colour, kinship and character – and early results from last year’s skulls are already revealing. In due course, scientific papers will spell it all out.
The big question is: why? Was the sacrifice out of respect for the dead? Or to help in their afterlife?
Radio carbon analysis by Richard Staff and Ruiliang Liu should narrow down the dates and show whether the horses were sacrificed over a period of years – which seems likeliest. Was there, for example, an annual gathering?

A discovery from even further back
Earlier in the summer in another part of Mongolia, Ursula and Turbat – together with many of the same students - made an exhilarating find. They were investigating burials believed to be by a society that existed 5,000 years ago.
But more work is needed before we go public with what promises to be an extraordinary story.

Ancient China’s demand for horses
A central question of the Horsepower project is where China got its horses – it needed thousands. The assumption is that the settled Chinese drew on the mobile peoples of the steppe with a flow heading south from what’s now Mongolia and also from a transition zone known as the Arc that stretches across northern China.
Answering this will involve close cooperation with archaeologists in China, and there’s good news on that.
It’s the 50th anniversary of the sensational discovery of the terracotta warriors, buried near Xi’an with the first Chinese emperor. And at the celebrations – with political leaders, prominent Chinese archaeologists and acrobats - Chris Gosden was the only non-Chinese person to give a keynote speech. It was a chance to explain the purpose of Horsepower.
And the team was delighted to hear the director of the Terracotta Warrior Museum, Li Gang, highlight the project.

The hope is that closer ties will lead to a better understanding of the horses buried with the emperor and shed new light on relations between the mobile peoples and the settled Chinese state.
One highlight in Xi’an was Horsepower artist Miranda Creswell engaging with a class of local children. The Terracotta Warrior Museum produced a charming video of the event which we hope to bring you.
And I’ll never forget asking a craftsman restoring the warriors what it’s like rebuilding one of their faces, alone on a dark winter’s evening.
“I look into their eyes,” he said, “and those eyes look right back at me, and the two thousand years between us suddenly vanish…”
Exploring the Arc
For many of the team, the trip was a first chance to visit the Arc to see how cultural influences of the steppe mixed with those of China.
In a series of museums along the Gansu Corridor – one of the main routes between the steppe and China – we clustered around astoundingly beautiful ornaments with the same animal motifs and styles of those found further north.
Dame Jessica Rawson, the project’s adviser and leading expert on the Arc, wasn’t with us but her recent book, Life and Afterlife in China, was an essential companion.

The Horsepower team
The long road journeys across Mongolia and along China’s new motorways became seminars-on-wheels. Bring together, for example, a geneticist, an archaeologist and an archaeometallurgist and it’s inevitable that fresh perspectives will emerge.
I’ve seen multi-disciplinary teams at work in marine science and polar research and they’ve all been more productive for combining different talents – and it’s the same now. There’s a lot more to come.