At the end of the Late Iron Age, herding communities in Mongolia organized into the first steppe empire in recorded Inner Asian history: the Xiongnu (Hunnu).  Scholars place the Xiongnu at the beginning of a long, tumultuous cycle of the rise and fall of mobile steppe empires made world-famous by Genghis Khan (Chinggis Khaan) and the Mongol Empire.  Recent research suggests that an underexplored aspect of the Xiongnu Empire – its nomadic herding lifestyle – may have been a key element in its emergence over 2,000 years ago.  The Baruun Mukhdagiin Am (BMA) Archaeological Project is a joint US-Mongolian archaeological expedition aimed at understanding a local community within the Xiongnu Empire through the lives and deaths of its human and animal constituents.  The BMA Archaeological Project builds off of pilot research directed by Dr. Zagd Batsaikhan (National University of Mongolia) at the main Xiongnu cemetery at BMA in 2006 in a multidisciplinary effort to examine the burials, campsites, and wider cultural landscape of this Xiongnu community.  The preliminary results of the BMA Archaeological Project’s 2013 field season of mapping and survey helped resolve initial research questions and shape future research objectives for our team, including plans for the 2014 field season.  A broader goal of the BMA Archaeological Project is to increase understanding of herding and stock-raising communities in prehistory and to help the modern global community understand and value mobile pastoralism as a lifeway in the 2^nd century BC as well as in the 21^st century in Mongolia and beyond.