Nomads – the invisible culture?

Pastoralists are not likely to leave many vestiges by which the archaeologist could recognize their presence. They tend to use vessels of leather and basketry instead of pots, to live in tents instead of excavated shelters or huts supported by stout timber posts or walls of stone or brick. Leather vessels and baskets have as a rule no chance of surviving. Tents need not even leave deep postholes to mark where they once stood. (Childe 1936, p.81) As the title suggests, it is the purpose of this chapter to question the assumption that nomads and their material remains are inaccessible to archaeologists. Nomads need not be archaeologically invisible. At the same time they do not constitute an archaeological ‘culture’ in the Childean sense. Paradoxically therefore, although the artifacts and campsites used by ancient nomads need not lie beyond the capacity of modern archaeology, there may be no simple means by which these are distinguishable from the productions of more settled communities. The traveller in the more isolated parts of the Near East should not be surprised to see groups of migrating nomads passing through villages whose inhabitants dress in the same manner as the nomads, speak the same dialect, employ the same range of household utensils, possess the same species of domestic animals and, in some cases, claim the same tribal affiliation. Differences there certainly are, but these are often ideological, organizational and economic rather than ‘cultural’.