Abstract
This thesis aims to guide the conversation away from attempting to identify a figure—specifically, an archer—on a vase, and instead to focus on the meaning of the figure on the larger conversation of ethnography, alterity, and the globalization of the ancient world. I investigate the Greek perception of mobile pastoralism of the Eurasian steppe through the lens of the ‘Scythian’ composite bow in Greek art and references to pastoralist archers in Greek literature. While Scythians and other pastoralist tribes were known for wearing dress peculiar to the east, carrying axes, and especially depending on horses for their livelihoods, I suggest that their specific version of the composite bow is the most effective representation of the global and technological effect of pastoralism and can offer further insight into the operation of alterity with respect to mobile pastoralism. The symbolic relationship between the external other and Greek identity was complex: mobile pastoralism, for the Greeks, inhabited an area between reality and myth, barbarism and civilization, proximity and distance, familiarity and exoticism.