Editing Huns (section)

== Lifestyle and economy ==

=== Pastoral nomadism ===
The Huns have traditionally been described as [[Nomad#Pastoralism|pastoral nomads]], living off of herding and moving from pasture to pasture to graze their animals.{{sfnm|1a1=Maenchen-Helfen|1y=1973|1pp=169–179 |2a1=Thompson|2y=1996|2pp=46–47|3a1=Kim|3y=2015|3p=2}} Hyun Jin Kim, however, holds the term "nomad" to be misleading:
<blockquote>[T]he term 'nomad', if it denotes a wandering group of people with no clear sense of territory, cannot be applied wholesale to the Huns. All the so-called 'nomads' of Eurasian steppe history were peoples whose territory/territories were usually clearly defined, who as pastoralists moved about in search of pasture, but within a fixed territorial space.{{sfn|Kim|2015|p=4}}</blockquote>
Maenchen-Helfen notes that pastoral nomads (or "seminomads") typically alternate between summer pastures and winter quarters: while the pastures may vary, the winter quarters always remained the same.{{sfn|Maenchen-Helfen|1973|pp=170–171}} This is, in fact, what Jordanes writes of the Hunnic Altziagiri tribe: they pastured near [[Chersonesus|Cherson]] on the [[Crimea]] and then wintered further north, with Maenchen-Helfen holding the [[Syvash]] as a likely location.{{sfn|Maenchen-Helfen|1973|p=171}} Ancient sources mention that the Huns' herds consisted of various animals, including cattle, horses, and goats; sheep, though unmentioned in ancient sources, "are more essential to the steppe nomad even than horses"{{sfn|Thompson|1996|p=47}} and must have been a large part of their herds.{{sfn|Maenchen-Helfen|1973|p=171}} Sheep bones are frequently found in Hun period graves.{{sfn|Anke|2010|p=521}} Additionally, Maenchen-Helfen argues that the Huns may have kept small herds of [[Bactrian camel]]s in the part of their territory in modern Romania and Ukraine, something attested for the Sarmatians.{{sfn|Maenchen-Helfen|1973|pp=172–174}}

[[Ammianus Marcellinus]] says that the majority of the Huns' diet came from the meat of these animals,{{sfn|Ammianus|1939|pp=382–383 [31.2.3]}} with Maenchen-Helfen arguing, on the basis of what is known of other steppe nomads, that they likely mostly ate mutton, along with sheep's cheese and milk.{{sfn|Maenchen-Helfen|1973|p=171}} They also "certainly" ate horse meat, drank mare's milk, and likely made cheese and [[kumis]].{{sfn|Maenchen-Helfen|1973|p=220}} In times of starvation, they may have boiled their horses' blood for food.{{sfn|Maenchen-Helfen|1973|pp=220–221}}

Ancient sources uniformly deny that the Huns practiced any sort of agriculture.{{sfn|Maenchen-Helfen|1973|p=174}} Thompson, taking these accounts at their word, argues that "[w]ithout the assistance of the settled agricultural population at the edge of the steppe they could not have survived".{{sfn|Thompson|1996|p=48}} He argues that the Huns were forced to supplement their diet by hunting and gathering.{{sfn|Thompson|1996|pp=47–48}} Maenchen-Helfen, however, notes that archaeological finds indicate that various steppe nomad populations did grow grain; in particular, he identifies a find at Kunya Uaz in [[Khwarezm]] on the [[Ob River]] of agriculture among a people who practiced artificial cranial deformation as evidence of Hunnic agriculture.{{sfn|Maenchen-Helfen|1973|pp=174–178}} Kim similarly argues that all steppe empires have possessed both pastoralist and sedentary populations, classifying the Huns as "agro-pastoralist".{{sfn|Kim|2015|p=4}}

=== Horses and transportation ===
[[File:Huns by Rochegrosse 1910 (detail).jpg|thumb|right|''Huns'' by [[Georges Rochegrosse|G. Rochegrosse]] (detail)'']]
As a nomadic people, the Huns spent a great deal of time riding horses: Ammianus claimed that the Huns "are almost glued to their horses",{{sfnm|1a1=Ammianus|1y=1939|1pp=384–385 [31.2.6] |2a1=Maenchen-Helfen|2y=1973|2p=203}} Zosimus claimed that they "live and sleep on their horses",{{sfn|Thompson|1996|p=57}} and Sidonius claimed that "[s]carce had an infant learnt to stand without his mother's aid when a horse takes him on his back".{{sfn|Maenchen-Helfen|1973|p=206}} They appear to have spent so much time riding that they walked clumsily, something observed in other nomadic groups.{{sfn|Maenchen-Helfen|1973|p=207}} Roman sources characterize the Hunnic horses as ugly.{{sfn|Maenchen-Helfen|1973|p=203}} It is not possible to determine the exact breed of horse the Huns used, despite a relatively good description by the Roman writer [[Vegetius]].{{sfn|Maenchen-Helfen|1973|pp=205–206}} Sinor believes that it was likely a breed of Mongolian pony.{{sfn|Sinor|1990|p=203}} However, horse remains are absent from all identified Hun burials.{{sfn|Sinor|1990|p=203}} Based on anthropological descriptions and archaeological finds of other nomadic horses, Maenchen-Helfen believes that they rode mostly [[geldings]].{{sfn|Maenchen-Helfen|1973|pp=213–214}}

Apart from horses, ancient sources indicate that the Huns used wagons for transportation. Maenchen-Helfen suggests that these wagons were mainly utilized to carry their tents, loot, as well as the elderly, women, and children.{{sfn|Maenchen-Helfen|1973|pp=214–220}}

=== Economic relations with the Romans ===
The Huns received a large amount of gold from the Romans, either in exchange for fighting for them as mercenaries or as tribute.{{sfn|Maenchen-Helfen|1973|pp=182–183}} Raiding and looting also furnished the Huns with gold and other valuables.{{sfn|Maenchen-Helfen|1973|pp=184–185}} Denis Sinor has argued that at the time of Attila, the Hunnic economy became almost entirely dependent on plunder and tribute from the Roman provinces.{{sfn|Sinor|1990|p=205}}

[[File:Huns by Rochegrosse 2.jpg|thumb|left|1910 Rochegrosse depiction of Roman villa in Gaul sacked by the hordes of Attila the Hun]]

Civilians and soldiers captured by the Huns might also be ransomed back, or else sold to Roman slave dealers as slaves.{{sfn|Maenchen-Helfen|1973|pp=184, 199}} The Huns themselves, Maenchen-Helfen argued, had little use for slaves due to their nomadic pastoralist lifestyle.{{sfn|Maenchen-Helfen|1973|pp=199–200}} More recent scholarship, however, has demonstrated that pastoral nomadists are actually more likely to use slave labor than sedentary societies: the slaves would have been used to manage the Huns' herds of cattle, sheep, and goats.{{sfn|Lenski|2015|p=239}} Priscus attests that slaves were used as domestic servants, but also that educated slaves were used by the Huns in positions of administration or even architects. Some slaves were even used as warriors.{{sfn|Lenski|2015|pp=239–240}}

The Huns also traded with the Romans. E. A. Thompson argued that this trade was very large scale, with the Huns trading horses, furs, meat, and slaves for Roman weapons, linen, and grain, and various other luxury goods.{{sfn|Thompson|1996|pp=189–194}} While Maenchen-Helfen concedes that the Huns traded their horses for what he considered to have been "a very considerable source of income in gold", he is otherwise skeptical of Thompson's argument.{{sfn|Maenchen-Helfen|1973|p=185}} He notes that the Romans strictly regulated trade with the barbarians and that, according to Priscus, trade only occurred at a fair once a year.{{sfn|Maenchen-Helfen|1973|p=187}} While he notes that smuggling also likely occurred, he argues that "the volume of both legal and illegal trade was apparently modest".{{sfn|Maenchen-Helfen|1973|p=187}} He does note that wine and silk appear to have been imported into the Hunnic Empire in large quantities, however.{{sfn|Maenchen-Helfen|1973|pp=188–189}} Roman gold coins appear to have been in circulation as currency within the whole of the Hunnic Empire.{{sfn|Maenchen-Helfen|1973|pp=185–186}}

===Connections to the Silk Road===
Christopher Atwood has suggested that the purpose of the original Hunnic incursion into Europe may have been to establish an outlet to the [[Black Sea]] for the [[Sogdian people|Sogdian]] merchants under their rule, who were involved in the trade along the [[Silk Road]] to China.{{sfn|Atwood|2012|p=48}} Atwood notes that Jordanes describes how the Crimean city of [[Chersonesus|Cherson]], "where the avaricious traders bring in the goods of Asia", was under the control of the Akatziri Huns in the sixth century.{{sfn|Atwood|2012|p=48}}