Glittering Bodies: The Politics of Mortuary Self-Fashioning in Eurasian Nomadic Cultures (700 BCE-200 BCE)

Andreeva, Petya

doi:10.1080/1362704x.2021.1991133

Cited by 4 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 5 publications

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“…In contrast to the use of small beads for the lower part of the body, larger gold plaques were used to decorate the upper part of the costumes in Arzhan-2, such as jackets and coats (Figure 7) (Andreeva 2021;Liu et al 2021b;Chugunov et al 2017). These plaques are large in comparison with the microbeads but still light.…”

Section: Placement Of Ornamentationmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Saka ‘Animal Style’ in Context: Material, Technology, Form and Use

Amir

Roberts

2023

Arts

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The Iron Age Saka population of the eastern Eurasian Steppe is considered one of the earliest of the Scythian groups to emerge at the beginning of the 1st millennium BCE, consequently producing some of the earliest expressions of ‘animal style’ art. Recent excavations of burial mounds (kurgans) in the East Kazakhstan region have provided invaluable data on the depositional contexts of such objects. This paper combines contextual archaeological data and visual analysis with data on the chemical composition and technological production (through X-ray fluorescence and optical microscopy) of some of the gold artefacts from the Eleke Sazy funerary complex in East Kazakhstan. It is demonstrated that the positioning of wearable ornaments within undisturbed archaeological contexts can give vital information about their form and function, while evidence of production techniques and use-wear indicate the time investment and status the objects may have held. It is concluded that the Saka engaged in a complex process of design and execution of their art, depicting many different elements of the natural world. Further research is needed into understanding Saka lifeways and belief systems in relation to large-scale processes of climate change, land use, time, and society from securely dated and well-documented funerary and domestic archaeological contexts.

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Section: Placement Of Ornamentationmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Saka ‘Animal Style’ in Context: Material, Technology, Form and Use

Amir

Roberts

2023

Arts

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Re-Making Animal Bodies in the Arts of Early China and North Asia: Perspectives From the Steppe

Andreeva

2022

Early China

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The Iron-Age Eurasian nomads created and circulated elaborate metalworks embellished with images of entwined, abbreviated, or contorted zoomorphic anatomies. This approach to zoomorphism has entered scholarly discourse under the blanket name “animal style,” a term often used to describe a vast corpus of zoomorphic images associated with the arts of steppe pastoralists. Numerous Warring States burials across the Ordos Loop indicate the transmission and adaptation of steppe-inspired zoomorphism into the funerary cultures of China's northern zone (beifang diqu 北方地區) and the Eastern Steppe more broadly. In the Han dynasty, animal-style images seem to have been transmitted even more widely, reaching China's southern periphery at the Kingdom of Nanyue 南越 and Lelang 樂浪 in the northern Korean peninsula. The Xianbei hegemony in the post-Han period marked a new trajectory for these designs, which reached Kofun Japan in the fifth century. Thus, the original trans-steppe visual formula underwent significant regional and local translations on a material and conceptual level to fit already established Chinese design strategies, techniques, and conceptions of animality. In this essay, I explore the regional alterations applied to the “supra” animal-style visuality in the Chinese northern periphery and other regions of Chinese political influence in North and Central Asia. In so doing, I seek to understand the swift entry of nomadic visual tropes, namely a specific “pars-pro-toto” device, into the visual vocabulary of early Chinese craftsmen from the Eastern Zhou to the Northern dynasties.

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The Zoomorphic Arts of Ancient Central Eurasia

2023

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Cover image courtesy of Met's open access database© 2023 by the authors. Articles in this book are Open Access and distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license, which allows users to download, copy and build upon published articles, as long as the author and publisher are properly credited, which ensures maximum dissemination and a wider impact of our publications.The book as a whole is distributed by MDPI under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND.

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Glittering Bodies: The Politics of Mortuary Self-Fashioning in Eurasian Nomadic Cultures (700 BCE-200 BCE)

Cited by 4 publications

References 5 publications

The Saka ‘Animal Style’ in Context: Material, Technology, Form and Use

The Saka ‘Animal Style’ in Context: Material, Technology, Form and Use

Re-Making Animal Bodies in the Arts of Early China and North Asia: Perspectives From the Steppe

The Zoomorphic Arts of Ancient Central Eurasia

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