Editing Huns (section)

=== 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}}