The past provides modern governments with a large supply of ideas and images to support the claims of national identity. Since independence, the authorities in Kazakhstan have been working hard to identify and promote heroic figures, objects to admire, and sites to provoke the memory, all designed to further the cause of nationalism.

The talk, based on recent fieldwork, will focus on the evolving official narrative of the Axial Age for Kazakh ethnogenesis - that is, the period when the main characteristics of an ethnic community first coalesced in full.