Concepts such as creolization and hybridity offer inclusive frameworks to study identity formation emanating from cross-cultural interaction. The borrowing of such concepts developed from recent history must contend with their relevance for the past as well as their applicability for understanding objects with mixed cultural features. This article reassesses the hybrid concept by contrasting a cognitive approach that identifies the figurative processes behind the local adaptation of foreign things. Looking at objects from Han China and the northern Black Sea, I examine how nomads and imperial agents conceptualized foreign objects through metonymic and metaphoric associations to influence understandings of self and group identity.