Taohongbala community: a brief description and the question of status

At present, there is an acute problem of cultural identity of the so-called ‘Ordos bronzes’ in both Chinese and Russian archeology. The most abundant material in this category is due to the sites of Taohongbala community, which is often referred to as a culture. In this article, the author attempts to describe his vision of status of the above-mentioned group of sites and to give a brief description of them. Taohongbala cemetery is situated at a distance of 3 km to the south-east of Taohongbala settlement in Khangin banner of present-day urban district Ordos, and at the distance of 45 km to the south-east of Khangin banner center. Six tombs were discovered in the sand pit in 1973. Another burial was found not far from the trench. The graves contained single burials of people in the supine position, with northward-directed heads. Although many researchers have focused on the issue of Ordos nomadic development, the discussion rarely attains the “archaeological cultures” status which is based on the detected artifacts. While the published data are not intended to be unique, they will allow looking more specifically at the issue raised by the scholarly discussion, which came to a conclusion of impossibility to call the group of Taohongbala sites the archaeological culture in its conventional meaning. In fact, a great amount of poorly documented relicts from the elite burials destroyed in the north-eastern part of Ordos to the south of the Yellow River are attributed to Taohongbala Culture. According to many indicators, Taohongbala community can be attributed to early Xiongnu, showing an example of how a nomadic unwritten community was transferred into a huge empire. Although Taohongbala is rather a generality of sites than an archaeological culture in the classical sense, the well-being of population which left behind Aluchaideng and other burials testifies for a property differentiation, fast-growing economy and developed aesthetic ideas. All of this, just at a higher level, we can see in the Xiongnu of Empire era.