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Near Eastern Art :
Bactria-Margiana Art : Bactria Margiana vessel
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Bactria Margiana vessel - HB.1025
Origin: Central Asia
Medium: Diorite
£7,500.00
Location: Great Britain
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| Description |
Bactria Margiana Archaeological
Complex (BMAC) is a modern
collective term referring to the
combined area of archaeological
discoveries that point to the
existence of a hitherto unknown
uniform bronze age civilization in
the area of central Asia. Bactria is
the ancient Greek name for the
area of Bactra (modern Balkh) in
northern Afghanistan and the
northeast corner of Iran, while
Margiana is again the ancient
Greek name for what was the
Persian satrapy of Margu and is
today south- eastern
Turkmenistan and southern
Uzbekistan. Through the region
runs the Amu Dar'ya River, which
was known in Greek history as the
Oxus River, hence this newly
found culture has also become
known as the Oxus Civilisation.
News of this lost civilisation began
leaking out in the 1970s, when
archaeologists came to dig in the
southern reaches of the Soviet
Union and in Afghanistan. Victor
Sarianidi, a Soviet archaeologist
of Greek extraction, supervised
the excavations which led to the
uncovering of this culture and to
the discovery of more than 200
settlements, dating to the Bronze
and early Iron Age. The Bactria-
Margiana culture spread within a
large continuous zone across an
area encompassing vast regions of
the modern countries of Iran,
Turkmenistan, Tajikistan,
Uzbekistan and Northern
Afghanistan. Flourishing between
about 2100 and 1700 BC, it was
contemporary with the Bronze Age
and was characterised by
monumental architecture, social
complexity and extremely
distinctive cultural artefacts that
vanished from the record shortly
after they first appeared. The
exact identity of the BMAC culture
has yet to be fully identified due
to the lack of written evidence at
the sites excavated up to know,
although pictographs on a tiny
stone seal have been argued to
indicate an independently-
developed writing system, thus
considering the BMAC to be a
literate civilisation. Commercial
trade and indirectly cultural
contacts appear to have been of a
certain importance, as artefacts of
this culture have been discovered
all over the Persian Gulf as well as
in the Iranian Plateau and the
Indus Valley. However the
material evidence which has been
brought to light is strongly
indicative of a powerful country
mostly due to the exceptional
fertility and wealth of its
agricultural lands. This in turn
gave rise to a complex and
multifaceted set of societies with
specialist craftsmen who produced
luxury materials for the ruling and
aristocratic elites. Through local
stone, carvers inhabiting the
regions of Bactria-Margiana did
not experience any shortage in
material; the main raw material
was soft steatite or a dark
soapstone, but also various kinds
of marble and white-veined
alabaster.
- (HB.1025)
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