Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Fantastic Fauna from China to Crimea: Image-Making in Eurasian Nomadic Societies, 700 Bce-500 CE

Fantastic Fauna from China to Crimea: Image-Making in Eurasian Nomadic Societies, 700 Bce-500 CE

Andreeva, Petya

Paperback

Art HistoryAncient History GeneralAsian Art

ISBN10: 139952853X
ISBN13: 9781399528535
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Published: Mar 31 2026
Pages: 336
Weight: 1.04
Height: 0.70 Width: 6.14 Depth: 9.21
Language: English

Explores the zoomorphic imagination and image-making of Eurasian nomads and their dynamic interactions with neighbouring sedentary empires.

Numerous Iron-Age nomadic alliances flourished along the 5000-mile Eurasian steppe route. From Crimea to the Mongolian grassland, nomadic image-making was rooted in metonymically conveyed zoomorphic designs, creating an alternative ecological reality. The nomadic elite nucleus embraced this elaborate image system to construct collective memory in reluctant, diverse political alliances organised around shared geopolitical goals rather than ethnic ties. Largely known by the term animal style, this zoomorphic visual rhetoric became so ubiquitous across the Eurasian steppe network that it transcended border regions and reached the heartland of sedentary empires like China and Persia.

This book shows how a shared fluency in animal-style design became a status-defining symbol and a bonding agent in opportunistic nomadic alliances, and was later adopted by their sedentary neighbours to showcase worldliness and control over the Other. In this study of enormous geographical scope, the author raises broader questions about the place of nomadic societies in the art-historical canon.

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