The ivory belt-plate, one of two found in a burial at the site of Tilla Bulak, Uzbekistan, shows a battle scene between two groups of mounted warriors. It belongs to a small group of figural belt plates from the region and is dated iconographically to the 1 st century BC / 1 st century AD. The elephant tooth from which it was worked was more than 2000 years old at the time.
The article is devoted to a ceramic ossuary found at the urban settlement site of Dal’varzintepa (Southern Uzbekistan) in a burial structure — a crypt cut into the thickness of a swollen city wall of the Kushan period. The ossuary rite was not typical for the Early Medieval Northern Tokharistan, and so the find is unique and of great interest. The author has attempted to explain the reasons for the appearance of this artifact in Dal’varzintepa.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.