Nomads, Past and Present

Maggie Freeman
  • 5.0 (9)
  • HISTORY

A podcast about nomadism and nomadic peoples, around the world and throughout history.

  1. FEB 17

    The Far Edges of the Known World: A New History of the Ancient Past

    When Ovid was exiled from Rome to a border town on the Black Sea, he despaired at his new bleak and barbarous surroundings. Like many Greeks and Romans, Ovid thought the outer reaches of his world was where civilization ceased to exist. Our fascination with the Greek and Roman world, and the abundance of writing that we have from it, means that we usually explore the ancient world from this perspective too. Was Ovid's exile really as bad as he claimed? What was it truly like to live on the edges of these empires, on the boundaries of the known world? Thanks to archaeological excavations, we now know that the borders of the empires we consider the 'heart' of civilization were in fact thriving, vibrant cultures – just not ones we might expect. This is where the boundaries of 'civilized' and 'barbarians' began to dissipate; where the rules didn't always apply; where normally juxtaposed cultures intermarried; and where nomadic tribes built their own cities. In this episode, Owen Rees joins me to discuss his book The Far Edges of the Known World (W.W. Norton & Company, 2025) and his research into what ‘everyday’ life looked like beyond the Athenian or Roman heartlands. Covering over 6,000 years of history on three continents, the book encourages readers to interrogate misconceptions about the ancient world and to understand its enormous diversity of lived experiences. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    1h 1m

  2. 11/13/2025

    Eric Halsey, "State Builders from the Steppe: A History of The First Bulgarian Empire" (This is RETHINK, 2025)

    State Builders from the Steppe: A History of the First Bulgarian Empire (This is RETHINK, 2025) explores how the Proto-Bulgarians were able to build both an empire and an identity amidst the turmoil of the Balkans in the Early Middle Ages. From creating the Cyrillic Alphabet and crowning the first ever Tsar to defeating the first Arab invasion of Europe and nearly conquering the last vestiges of the Roman Empire, the history of the First Bulgarian Empire is equal parts fascinating and dramatic. In this episode, Eric Halsey joins me to discuss the little-known history of the First Bulgarian Empire, its nomadic pastoralist origins, why the empire collapsed, and its legacies in Bulgaria today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    46 min

  3. 10/27/2025

    A Song for the Horses: Musical Heritage for More-than-Human Futures in Mongolia

    As permafrost in Siberia continues to melt and the steppe in the Gobi turns to desert, people in Mongolia are faced with overlapping climate crises. Some nomadic herders describe climate change as the end of a world. They are quick to add that the world has ended before for Indigenous people in North Asia, as waves of colonialism have left the steppe with a complicated web of apocalypses. A Song for the Horses by K. G. Hutchins examines cases in which people respond to the pressures of climate change by drawing on cultural heritage to foster social resiliency. In this episode, K. G. joins me to discuss his research on the morin khuur, or “horse fiddle,” in Mongolia, and how Mongolians use the traditional instrument to express and envision human and more-than-human futures against the backdrop of anthropogenic climate change. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    1h 4m

  4. 09/28/2025

    Tiffany Earley-Spadoni, "Landscapes of Warfare: Urartu and Assyria in the Ancient Middle East" (UP Colorado, 2025)

    Landscapes of Warfare: Urartu and Assyria in the Ancient Middle East (University Press of Colorado, 2025) offers an in-depth exploration of the Urartian empire, which occupied the highlands of present-day Turkey, Armenia, and Iran in the early first millennium BCE. Lesser known than its rival, the Neo-Assyrian empire, Urartu presents a unique case of imperial power distributed among mountain fortresses rather than centralized in cities. Through spatial analysis, the book demonstrates how systematic warfare, driven by imperial ambitions, shaped Urartian and Assyrian territories, creating symbolically and materially powerful landscapes. Tiffany Earley-Spadoni challenges traditional views by emphasizing warfare’s role in organizing ancient landscapes, suggesting that Urartu’s strength lay in its strategic optimization of terrain through fortified regional networks. Using an interdisciplinary approach that includes GIS-enabled studies and integrates archaeological, historical, and art-historical evidence, she illustrates how warfare was a generative force in structuring space and society in the ancient Middle East. Landscapes of Warfare situates Urartu’s developments within the broader context of regional empires, providing insights into the mechanisms of warfare, governance, and cultural identity formation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    39 min

  5. 08/01/2025

    The Nomadic Origin of the State

    Contemporary, commonly-accepted understandings of the history of Chinese state formation see the nomadic pastoralists of the Eurasian steppe as peripheral appendages to a centralized, agriculturalist empire. In his work, Lhamsuren Munkh-Erdene argues against what he calls “the Sinocentric paradigm” in favor of an interpretation of nomadic pastoralism as the origin of the premodern state. In this interview, we discuss the conquest theory of state formation, how mobility is essential to state control, and how nomadic state origins can be found globally beyond the Eurasian steppe. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    1h 13m

  6. 07/08/2025

    The Roma: A Travelling History

    The word Roma conjures images of free-spirited nomads, creative and easy-going people who choose to eschew social conformity for personal independence and a life on the road. Few know the Roma’s long history of being harassed, expelled, deported, demonized, enslaved, and murdered. In The Roma: A Travelling History, Madeline Potter blends memoir and archival research to uncover Romani history across Europe and beyond, from the United States to Romania where she was born and raised; from sixteenth-century Spain to modern Sweden; from Nazi Austria to twenty-first-century France. Madeline tells the interwoven stories of joy and resilience, trauma and persecution, of Romani communities past and present, and reflects on what the future may hold for both nomadic and settled Romani families. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    43 min

  7. 01/15/2025

    The Political Ecology of Violence: Peasants and Pastoralists in the Last Ottoman Century

    From the nineteenth to the early twentieth centuries, recurrent and extreme climate disruptions became an underlying yet unacknowledged component of escalating conflict between Christian Armenian peasants and Muslim Kurdish pastoralists in Ottoman Kurdistan. By the eve of the First World War, the Ottoman state's shifting responses to these mounting tensions transformed the conflict into organized and state-sponsored violence.  In her book The Political Ecology of Violence: Peasants and Pastoralists in the Last Ottoman Century (University of Cambridge Press, 2024), Dr. Zozan Pehlivan examines the impact of climate on local communities, their responses and resilience strategies, arguing that nineteenth-century ecological change had a transformative and antagonistic impact on economy, state, and society. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    52 min

  8. 12/07/2024

    Persistent Pastoralism: Monuments and Settlements in the Archaeology of Dhofar

    Today I talked to Joy McCorriston about Persistent Pastoralism: Monuments and Settlements in the Archaeology of Dhofar (Archaeopress Publishing, 2023). In the Dhofar region of southern Oman, pastoralists have constructed monuments in discrete pulses over the past 7,500 years. From small-scale stone burial markers to platforms to settlements, these constructions could have been used as sites of gathering, landmarks, mnemonic devices, and religious rituals. Dr. Joy McCorriston’s archaeological teamwork in the region investigates how mobile pastoralists used monuments to link dispersed households into broader social communities.  Over a broad swath of history from the Middle Neolithic ca. 5000 BC to the turn of the common era, their research tracks shifts in pastoralist lifestyles, social identities, and patterns of resource access and use, through pastoralists’ monuments. Despite and against these shifts, archaeological excavations show that pastoralism persisted in Dhofar even as agriculture developed. In this episode, Joy joins me to share the findings from her research in Dhofar and her insights into pastoralist monument-building and practices of mobility around monuments in ancient southern Oman. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    49 min
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Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
9 Ratings

About

A podcast about nomadism and nomadic peoples, around the world and throughout history.

Information

  • Creator
    Maggie Freeman
  • Years Active
    2021 - 2026
  • Episodes
    48
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2022 Digital Nomads
  • Show Website
    Nomads, Past and Present

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