LRCCS Noon Lecture Series | Cultural Mediations in the Great Wall Frontier: The Southern Xiongnu in Northern China

The Great Wall regions of northern China have long been characterized as frontiers of political and cultural expansion in which steppe groups were acculturated and assimilated into Chinese society. Yet examinations of individual communities and persons in the frontier demonstrate overarching vacillations of political sovereignties and varied mélanges of cultural practices. This lecture engages historical and archaeological discussions of the Southern Xiongnu (ca.50-200 CE) as one example of local leaders who navigated their presence between exterior competing regimes through a suite of hybrid cultural mediations to successfully maintain independent political power.

Bryan K. Miller received a MA in Archaeology from UCLA and a PhD in East Asian Civilizations from the University of Pennsylvania. His research investigates the history and archaeology of early empires in East Asia, focusing on intrapolity social and economic developments that occurred over the course of large polities as well as the interaction between regimes of Mongolia and China. His publications include studies of political substrata and the roles of local elites in regional polities, alternate models of interaction for frontier matrices of cultures in contact, functions and configurations of urban settings, and the interplay between local politics and larger processes of globalization. He is currently completing a book manuscript on the Xiongnu Empire for Oxford University Press.

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Zoom webinar; attendance requires registration: https://umich.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_9qILPj9MQa6RuEtKpxd_9g