Tamgas of the nomads of the Middle Ages and modern period in Southeastern Kazakhstan: an attempt at comparative-typological analysis

At the end of the 19th century, following the discovery of Old Turkic runic inscriptions, N. Aristov proposed that the runic script derived from tamgas. Based on the idea of an unbroken tradition of tamga usage, he attempted to compare the graphemes of runic writing with Kazakh tamgas. However, at that time the limited knowledge of both Old Turkic and Kazakh tamgas made it impossible to carry out a diachronic comparison. The present study aims to test the possibility of morphological continuity between tamgas of the Medieval and Early Modern periods and to determine whether there was a continuous tradition of their use. The source base includes the results of fieldwork (tamga-petroglyphs of the Medieval and Early Modern periods), compared with numismatic evidence, Old Turkic runic inscriptions, and written sources. Most of the Medieval signs identified in South-Eastern Kazakhstan that are comparable with Old Turkic runic graphemes date to the second half of the 8th – first half of the 9th century and are located near zones of traditional communication routes and medieval political-administrative centers. Tamgas of the 14th–17th centuries in South-Eastern Kazakhstan are either unknown or have not been identified, while Oirat tamgas of the 17th–18th centuries reflect the presence of different groups. Tamgas of the Early Modern period in South-Eastern Kazakhstan date to the second half of the 19th – first third of the 20th century and are concentrated mainly around contested volost borders and areas of settler land use. The depiction of tamgas in this period is associated with land scarcity and administrative-territorial changes. During this time, tamgas reveal a change in the function of the sign – from markers of group identity to legal symbols and, eventually, to the “loss of knowledge” of the sign’s form as the economic system and patterns of land use changed. Thus, no continuous tradition of tamga use has been identified in the region. The practice of carving tamgas was revived only under specific socio-economic and legal conditions, while morphological similarities between complexes of different periods are limited to simple convergent figures, insufficient for ethnic attribution.