People and goods moving east-west across the Eurasian continent have, for as long as humans have been mobile, used the steppe as the primary overland route.

The Chinese silk in the Ice Maiden’s burial is evidence of this corridor in use: goods from China moved westward, goods from the Mediterranean and the Black Sea coast moved eastward, and the nomadic peoples of the steppe were participants in and facilitators of this movement.

The Pazyryk occupied a specific node in this system: the Altai Mountains, where several different ecological zones met, where multiple trade and migration routes converged, where the peoples of the eastern steppe and the peoples of the western steppe had long interacted.

This nodal position explains some of the remarkable diversity of materials in Pazyryk burials.