On the Xiongnu frontier the great tombs were built for women, each flanked by commoner men in simple graves

The Xiongnu were the first nomad empire of the eastern steppe, from about 200 BC to the late first century AD. At Takhiltyn Khotgor, an aristocratic cemetery on the empire's western frontier, the Mongol-American Khovd Archaeology Project excavated in 2007, 2008 and 2010. The monumental square tombs had been built for women. One, THL-82, held an adult woman in a decorated wood-plank coffin with six horses, Chinese bronze chariot fittings and a bronze pot. The larch planks had been hauled into treeless mountains at great cost. Coffins bore golden sun and moon emblems of Xiongnu imperial power. Each woman was flanked by satellite graves of men in simple earthen pits; one lay face down. In April 2023 Juhyeon Lee, Bryan Miller, Christina Warinner and Choongwon Jeong published 18 genomes from this and a nearby local-elite cemetery in Science Advances. The lowest-status people, likely servants in satellite graves, were the most genetically diverse. The elite were more alike and had more eastern ancestry, so power was held by particular families. Miller is paraphrased as saying that these women held noble ranks and acted as agents of the imperial state on the frontier.