Bryan K. Miller ( University of Michigan)

The Great Wall regions of northern China have long been characterized as frontiers of political and cultural expansion in which steppe groups were acculturated and assimilated into Chinese society. Yet examinations of individual communities and persons in the frontier demonstrate overarching vacillations of political sovereignties and varied mélanges of cultural practices. This lecture engages historical and archaeological discussions of the Southern Xiongnu (ca.50-200 CE) as one example of local leaders who navigated their presence between exterior competing regimes through a suite of hybrid cultural mediations to successfully maintain independent political power.