Tools & tillage: a journal on the history of the implements of cultivation and other agricultural processes (5.1984/1987)

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REVIEWS

S. VAINSHTEIN: Nomads of South Siberia. The
Pastoral Economics of Tuva (edited by Caroline
Humphrey) Cambridge University Press 1980
(Cambridge Studies in Social Anthropology), 289
pp £120.
This excellent book was first published in 1972 in
Moscow, under the title Istoricheskaya etno-
grafiya tuvintsev. The purpose of this note is not
to review it, but to draw the attention of the read-
ers of Tools and Tillage to the important chapter
on “the agricultural tradition of the nomads”.
Nomadism and agricultural practices are not as a
rule linked in the academic mind, though they are
by no means mutually exclusive. This is only one
of the many valuable points to which Vainshtein
refreshingly draws attention.
Though the inhabitants of Tuva practised rein-
deer-herding and forms of nomadic pastoralism
based on sheep and goats, horses and cattle, with
some camels and yaks, manure from penned ani-
mals was never used as a fertiliser (though when
dry it could be re-used as bedding), presumably
because the pens were so far, up to 30-40 km or
more, from the arable patches. On the other
hand, artifical irrigation was essential in the
mountain-steppe area. Indeed, archaeological in-
vestigation has demonstrated that much irrigation
has been going on since before the Scythian
period (Kazylgan culture), 7th to 3rd century
BC, so indicating a remarkable historical con-
tinuity in agricultural practices. Grains of millet
and a fragment of a corn-grinding implement
have been found in the Kazylgan burial grounds.
In graves of the Hun period (2nd century BC to
the early years of our era), large quantities of mil-
let grains have been found, and hoes made of
bone. In various parts of Tuva, medieval iron and
bronze plough shares have turned up, as well as
cast-iron mould-boards which appear to have
been made locally (to judge by scientific analysis
of the metal) as well as got from China. Other

medieval finds include parts of sickles, and even a
scythe (from the Kyrgyz period, 9th century AD
onwards).
Ploughs with shares and mouldboards may
well have been introduced by the Mongols who
subjugated Tuva under Genghis Khan in 1207,
but alongside these were less complicated wooden
ploughing implements, ards, known in Tuvinian
as andazyn. Iron heads for such implements have
been found from the medieval period and earlier.
This was what the nomadic pastoralists used,
whilst the ploughs were used by the farmers of
the military-agricultural settlement set up by the
Mongols.
Cultivated areas were as close as possible -
though not always very close - to spring and
summer camps, so that men could go there to
attend to sowing, harvesting, and also watering.
The main crops were, in the 1930s, millet, barley
(mainly cvs^ed-Hordeum nudum), and to a lesser
extent wheat and oats. If one household grew
both barley and millet, they would require two
plots, one at a higher level for barley, and a lower
one for millet. There was little scarcity of land for
cultivation, except in the rather densely settled
Chadar area. What decided whether or not a
household would engage in cultivation was sim-
ply the availability of draught-animals to till and a
supply of grain to sow.
The andazyn was used for furrowing out the
smaller ditches that led from the larger one, for
irrigating the plot, as well as for covering the seed
after it had been sown, with furrows 8-12 cm
deep and 10-12 cm across. On soft earth, after
irrigation, it could turn over the soil to some
extent. The symmetrical form of its body and
iron share are shown in the accompanying dia-
gram (p. 155). A harrow of twigs or fir branches,
about 2 m wide by 1.5 m long, completed the job
after ploughing. A plot was used for 2, or 3 years
at most, before being left fallow for several years.
The favourite draught-animal was the bull;