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Precious Adornments: Nomadic Ornaments from Tibet and the Ordos (April 22 nd – August 31 st 2008 )

Ornaments play an important role in the lives of nomads. Not only do they indicate status through the display of wealth, they can serve practical functions and are also used as currency during times of distress. ‘Precious Adornments: Nomadic Ornaments from Tibet and the Ordos' looks into the functions of ornaments among modern-day Tibetan nomads and nomads of the Ordos Desert region of North China about 2,500 years ago.

The enormous expanse of grasslands that is bordered by Siberia in the north, the Gobi Desert in the south, and from the eastern edges of present-day Hungary in the west to the Sea of Japan in the east, was once home to nomadic pastoralists. They have no fixed place of dwelling and drove their livestock, such as cattle, sheep, goats, and camels, from place to place to new grazing grounds. Because animals were such an important part of their lives, zoomorphic forms are a prominent feature of their ornamentation.

Among the groups of pastoral nomads were the warrior-herdsmen Yuezhi and Xiongnu tribes, who lived in the Orodos Desert region just beyong the Great Wall of China. Having no written language, the bulk of what we know of their societies comes form Chinese sources and archaeology. The Xiongnu were first described in Chinese texts in the in the 3 rd century BCE as vassals of the more powerful Yuezhi people, who the Xiongnu eventually expelled from the region in 160 BCE. The Xiongnu were then conquored by the Chinese Han Dynasty in 123 BCE. Some believe a branch of the Xiongnu later became the Huns that swept through Europe in the 4 th century.

Xiongnu raiders on horseback were a constant threat to the Chinese, often crossing into the Chinese empire to pilage farms and cities for goods and slaves. However, their economy was sustained by animal husbandry and livestock trading; supplemented by agriculture, hunting and fishing, the extent of which depended on the environmental conditions.

The most common types of Ordos objects to survive in the archaeological record are bronze ornaments. They include plaques that would have been sewn onto textiles or leather, knives, spoons, horse fittings, and ornaments of unknown function. Many of these objects may have been inlaid with turquoise and other semi-precious stones. Serving similar economic functions as modern-day nomadic Tibetan ornaments, it is possible that these ancient nomads would have traded these precious objects, piece by piece, in times of scarcity.

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