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REVIEW BY GEORGE NASH
The Altai region of western Mongolia has long been considered marginal in broader Eurasian archaeological narratives. In this book, William Fitzhugh and Richard Kortum build a compelling case for the region’s centrality in the evolution of nomadic societies, hunting cultures, and ritual landscapes. Drawing on decades of fieldwork around Khoton Lake and the surrounding valleys, the authors document hundreds of petroglyph panels and burial features, using the glaciated bedrock as both literal and metaphorical foundation for a 20,000-year cultural continuum.
Ritual Landscape: rock art and archaeology in the Mongolian Altai, richly layered and meticulously researched, achieves something rarely done at this scale: the seamless integration of rock-art studies with traditional archaeological investigation, all within the dramatic and geologically unique landscape of the Mongolian Altai.
One of the book’s core achievements lies in its explicit commitment to bridging what are often two isolated scholarly fields – rock art (for want of a better term) and archaeology. The authors demonstrate that rock art, when understood in conjunction with mortuary architecture, stratified sites, and environmental context, becomes a vibrant thread in the fabric of human history rather than an isolated aesthetic phenomenon. This approach allows them to reinterpret petroglyphs not as passive visual records, but as elements in ritual and social life, aligned with burials, ceremonial monuments, and glacially polished rock surfaces deliberately selected for their symbolic resonance.
The chronological scope is one of the book’s strongest aspects. Tracing developments from the Upper Palaeolithic to the historic pastoral era, the authors map the evolution of subsistence practices, mobility strategies, and belief systems, some still practised. They reveal how rock-art motifs shift from large game animals to herd imagery, and eventually to the iconography of mounted nomadism. This sequencing, anchored in both stratigraphic evidence and stylistic rock-art analysis, is crucial for understanding transformations in steppe lifeways.
Another thing that sets this volume apart is its commitment to landscape archaeology. The authors go beyond cataloguing sites: they invite readers to see the Altai as a ritualised geography. Hills, rivers, glacial terraces, and mountain passes are not simply environmental backdrops but participants in human storytelling. The idea of a ‘ritual landscape’ emerges forcefully, showing how visibility, proximity, and terrain features were integral to the placement of imagery and monuments.
The volume is richly illustrated, with high-quality photographs, maps, and diagrams enhancing the narrative. This visual dimension is critical for a study so deeply rooted in the graphic record and terrain. Scholars of Central Asia, rock art, and nomadic societies will find this work not only informative but visually immersive.
Importantly, Ritual Landscape raises questions as much as it answers them. It pushes for new methods of dating rock art, calls for greater integration of iconographic and archaeological data, and encourages a rethinking of steppe societies as active cultural agents rather than passive migrants. The implications for future research, both in the Altai and across similar frontier zones, are profound.
Ritual Landscape: rock art and archaeology in the Mongolian Altai
William W Fitzhugh and Richard D Kortum
International Polar Institute Press, Arctic Studies Centre, and Smithsonian Institution, £23
ISBN 979-8988473251
