Ancient Nomads of the Eurasian and North American Grasslands.

Frits Pannekoek is an associate professor of heritage studies, director
of information resources at the University of Calgary, and the author of
A Snug Little Flock: The Social Origins of the Riel Resistance of
1869–70.

The almost coffee-table book by two senior curators/anthropologists, one from Russia and one from Canada, saw its origins as a companion to the exhibition “Masters of the Plains: Ancient Nomads of Russia and Canada,” undertaken by Canada’s Museum of Civilization and Samara’s Museum of History and Regional Studies in Civilization. This well-illustrated and well-written volume argues that the plains people of the northern hemispheres have a great deal in common, largely because of a unique shared grassland environment. There is also a less than subtle suggestion that the two plains peoples are also united through a common blood. To prove the common experiences, the authors have divided book into archaeology, subsistence food, transportation, life in camp, clothing and decoration, the role of metals, and spiritual life. Yes, differences are emphasized, but evidence tends to reinforce the feeling that their adaptations to the grassland environment have incredible commonalities.

It will be argued by some that the attempt to find similarities through material culture is a decidedly old-fashioned way to deal with any people, an approach being abandoned by many museums. Indeed, museums that take this approach, like the Pitt Rivers in Cambridge, are roundly criticized for doing so. There the entire collections are organized by object use rather than by culture. This approach, it is argued by curators in the modern museum, doesn’t necessarily see a culture on its own terms; rather, it reinforces artificial commonalities through material culture. You are understood by what you own, not by what you believe.

This fixation on material culture remains an essentially European intellectual concern. It would have been equally interesting to have seen the elders of each society talk and find commonalities (such as they are) rather than have commonalities defined by professional archaeologists, who by their discipline must focus on material culture. Nevertheless, the book is an excellent piece of heritage scholarship that has been written in a manner than will be accessible to the knowledgeable general public.