This piece pertains to an ancient culture referred
to both as the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological
Complex (BCAM) or as the Oxus Civilisation. The
Bactria-Margiana culture spread across an area
encompassing the modern nations of
Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and
Northern Afghanistan. Flourishing between
about 2100 and 1700 BC, it was contemporary
with the European Bronze Age, and was
characterised by monumental architecture, social
complexity and extremely distinctive cultural
artefacts that vanish from the record a few
centuries after they first appear. Pictographs on
seals have been argued to indicate an
independently-developed writing system.
It was one of many economic and social entities
in the vicinity, and was a powerful country 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 such as this for the ruling and
aristocratic elites. Trade appears to have been
important, as Bactrian artefacts appear all over
the Persian Gulf as well as in the Iranian Plateau
and the Indus Valley. For this reason, the area
was fought over from deep prehistory until the
Mediaeval period, by the armies of Asia Minor,
Greece (Macedonia), India and the Arab States,
amongst others.
Small stone composite figurine portrayed
squatting, wearing a robe decorated with a low
relief abstract wavy pattern, perhaps imitating
sheep's fleece, with a limbless body.
This figurine could be ascribed to a group of
composite statuettes made of soft black steatite
or chlorite and alabster unearthed prevalently in
Bactria-Margiana and dating to the early 2nd
millennium BC.
Western Central Asia or Bactrio-Margiana, now
known as Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and
northern Afghanistan, has yielded objects
attesting to a highly developed civilization in the
late third and early second millennium B.C.
Artifacts from the region indicate that there were
contacts with Iran to the southwest. As clay
copies of such statuettes have also been found in
burial contexts, it is likely that they would have
been made of various materials. Unfortunately
the archaeological evidence is still lacking, as
many of the statuettes from excavated sites are
either incomplete or shattered.
Such composite statuettes, always carefully
executed, have been generally associated with
burials and probably portrayed the women
buried in the grave. Yet, the standardisation of
their shapes would seem to point to an ideal
rather than a real person, including the fact that
some of the best representations of squatted
ladies in compartemented seals from the same
area and time featured also wings or animals
suggesting a divine connotation.
For examples of composite female figurines see:
J. Aruz ed, Art of the First Cities, New York,
2003: pp. 367-368, and V. Sarianidi, Margus,
2002: 138-145.
