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Begram:
New Perspectives on the Ivory and Bone Carvings
by
Sanjyot Mehendale
The focus
of this publication is the ivory and bone finds of an early historical
period site in modern Afghanistan known as Begram, and what they
may suggest about the site and the nature and extent of cultural
exchange along the period’s Silk Roads of Central Asia.
Early efforts
to date the objects suggested that certain pieces could be placed
several centuries apart. Based on this dating and influenced by
notions of the site as an ancient royal city, consistent with reigning
archaeological paradigms, the excavators and virtually all subsequent
scholarship contended that the objects had been found in a summer
Kushan dynastic palace and that they had been gathered there over
several centuries, as a royal treasure.
This publication
seeks to reexamine the finds, to deconstruct the original royal
treasure theory, and to posit a different view of the artifacts
and of the nature of the settlement. Stylistic reexamination of
the finds supports the likelihood that the ivory and bone pieces
were all produced contemporaneously in the 1st or early
2nd century CE. Comparison with analogous finds in Pompeii
and sites in India and Central Asia supports this 1st
century date, as does dating of the site’s Chinese lacquers and
Roman ware. New categorizations for the ivory and bone objects are
presented, and early reconstructions of the objects are reviewed,
and refuted where appropriate.
Rather than
relying solely on stylistic analysis of the pieces, this work also
places the finds in their archaeological context, which suggests
that the site may not have been a royal palace but rather a significant
trading settlement of the Kushan Empire, well situated along crucial
trade routes.
By close stylistic
comparison with finds at other Central Asian sites along the Silk
Roads, the publication argues further that an amalgam of styles
in certain Begram objects suggests local Central Asian production
in a richly diverse cultural environment. The work seeks to demonstrate
that while some of the extraordinary carved ivory and bone objects
may have moved to the site along trade routes which linked India
with China and the Graeco-Roman West, others of these objects may
have been produced at Begram itself, by local workshops and artisans.
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