Central Asian Art
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Central Asian Art
Central Asian art is visual art created in Central Asia, in areas corresponding to modern Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and parts of modern Mongolia, China and Russia. The art of ancient and medieval Central Asia reflects the rich history of this vast area, home to a huge variety of peoples, religions and ways of life. The artistic remains of the region show a remarkable combinations of influences that exemplify the multicultural nature of Central Asian society. The Silk Road transmission of art, Scythian art, Greco-Buddhist art, Serindian art and more recently Persianate culture, are all part of this complicated history. From the late second millennium BC until very recently, the grasslands of Central Asia – stretching from the Caspian Sea to central China and from southern Russia to northern India – have been home to migrating herders who practised mixed economies on the margins of sedentary societies. The p ...
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Bactria–Margiana Archaeological Complex
The Bactria–Margiana Archaeological Complex (short BMAC) or Oxus Civilization, recently dated to c. 2250–1700 BC,Lyonnet, Bertille, and Nadezhda A. Dubova, (2020b)"Questioning the Oxus Civilization or Bactria- Margiana Archaeological Culture (BMAC): an overview" in Bertille Lyonnet and Nadezhda A. Dubova (eds.), ''The World of the Oxus Civilization'', Routledge, London and New York, p. 32.: "...Salvatori has often dated its beginning very early (ca. 2400 BC), to make it match with Shahdad where a large amount of material similar to that of the BMAC has been discovered. With the start of international cooperation and the multiplication of analyses, the dates now admitted by all place the Oxus Civilization between 2250 and 1700 BC, while its final phase extends until ca. 1500 BC..." is the modern archaeological designation for a Bronze Age civilization of Central Asia, previously dated to c. 2400–1900 BC, by Sandro Salvatori, in its urban phase or Integration Era. Though i ...
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Greco-Buddhist Art
The Greco-Buddhist art or Gandhara art of the north Indian subcontinent is the artistic manifestation of Greco-Buddhism, a cultural syncretism between Ancient Greek art and Buddhism. It had mainly evolved in the ancient region of Gandhara. The series of interactions leading to Gandhara art occurred over time, beginning with Alexander the Great's brief incursion into the area, followed by the Maurya Empire, Mauryan Emperor Ashoka converting the region to Buddhism. Buddhism became the prominent religion in the Indo-Greek Kingdom, Indo-Greek Kingdoms. However, Greco-Buddhist art truly flowered and spread under the Kushan Empire, when the first surviving devotional images of the Buddha were created during the 1st-3rd centuries CE. Gandhara art reached its zenith from the 3rd-5th century CE, when most surviving motifs and artworks were produced. Gandhara art is characterized by Buddhist subject matter, sometimes adapting Greco-Roman elements, rendered in a style and forms that are hea ...
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Afanasevo Culture
The Afanasievo culture, or Afanasevo culture (Afanasevan culture) (russian: Афанасьевская культура ''Afanas'yevskaya'' kul'tura), is the earliest known archaeological culture of south Siberia, occupying the Minusinsk Basin and the Altai Mountains during the eneolithic era, 3300 to 2500 BCE. It is named after a nearby mountain, Gora Afanasieva () in what is now Bogradsky District, Khakassia, Russia. David W. Anthony believes that the Afanasevan population was descended from people who migrated c. 3700–3300 BCE across the Eurasian Steppe from the pre- Yamnaya Repin culture of the Don-Volga region. Because of its geographical location and dating, Anthony and earlier scholars such as Leo Klejn, J. P. Mallory and Victor H. Mair have linked the Afanasevans to the Proto-Tocharian language. Dating Conventional archaeological understanding tended to date at around 2000–2500 BC. However radiocarbon gave dates as early as 3705 BC on wooden tools and 287 ...
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Pontic Steppes
Pontic, from the Greek ''pontos'' (, ), or "sea", may refer to: The Black Sea Places * The Pontic colonies, on its northern shores * Pontus (region), a region on its southern shores * The Pontic–Caspian steppe, steppelands stretching from north of the Black Sea as far east as the Caspian Sea * The Pontic Mountains, a range of mountains in northern Turkey, close to the southern coast of the Black Sea Languages and peoples * Pontic Greeks, all Greek peoples from the shores of the Black Sea and Pontus * Pontic Greek, a form of the Greek language originally spoken by the Pontic Greeks (see above) * ''Pontic'', as opposed to ''Caspian'' (which refers to the possibly related Nakho-Dagestanian or Northeast Caucasian languages), is sometimes used as a synonym for the Northwest Caucasian language family. * Pontic languages, the hypothetical language family linking the Northwest Caucasian and Indo-European languages, and Proto-Pontic, the Pontic proto-language, is the reconstructed comm ...
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Indo-European Migrations
The Indo-European migrations were hypothesized migrations of Proto-Indo-European language (PIE) speakers, and subsequent migrations of people speaking derived Indo-European languages, which took place approx. 4000 to 1000 BCE, potentially explaining how these languages came to be spoken across a large area of Eurasia, from India and Iran, to Europe. While there can be no direct evidence of prehistoric languages, a synthesis of linguistics, archaeology, anthropology and genetics establish both the existence of Proto-Indo-European and the spread of its daughter dialects through migrations of large populations of its speakers, as well as the recruitment of new speakers through emulation of conquering elites. Comparative linguistics describes the similarities between various languages and the laws of systematic change, which allow the reconstruction of ancestral speech (see Indo-European studies). Archaeology traces the spread of artifacts, habitations, and burial sites presumed to ...
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Afanasievo Culture
The Afanasievo culture, or Afanasevo culture (Afanasevan culture) (russian: Афанасьевская культура ''Afanas'yevskaya'' kul'tura), is the earliest known archaeological culture of south Siberia, occupying the Minusinsk Basin and the Altai Mountains during the eneolithic era, 3300 to 2500 BCE. It is named after a nearby mountain, Gora Afanasieva () in what is now Bogradsky District, Khakassia, Russia. David W. Anthony believes that the Afanasevan population was descended from people who migrated c. 3700–3300 BCE across the Eurasian Steppe from the pre-Yamnaya Repin culture of the Don-Volga region. Because of its geographical location and dating, Anthony and earlier scholars such as Leo Klejn, J. P. Mallory and Victor H. Mair have linked the Afanasevans to the Proto-Tocharian language. Dating Conventional archaeological understanding tended to date at around 2000–2500 BC. However radiocarbon gave dates as early as 3705 BC on wooden tools and 2874 BC ...
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Steppe
In physical geography, a steppe () is an ecoregion characterized by grassland plains without trees apart from those near rivers and lakes. Steppe biomes may include: * the montane grasslands and shrublands biome * the temperate grasslands, savannas and shrublands biome A steppe may be semi-arid or covered with grass or with shrubs or with both, depending on the season and latitude. The term " steppe climate" denotes the climate encountered in regions too dry to support a forest but not dry enough to be a desert. Steppe soils are typically of the chernozem type. Steppes are usually characterized by a semi-arid or continental climate. Extremes can be recorded in the summer of up to and in winter, . Besides this major seasonal difference, fluctuations between day and night are also very great. In both the highlands of Mongolia and northern Nevada, can be reached during the day with sub-freezing readings at night. Mid-latitude steppes feature hot summers and cold wint ...
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Animal Style
Animal style art is an approach to decoration found from China to Northern Europe in the early Iron Age, and the barbarian art of the Migration Period, characterized by its emphasis on animal motifs. The zoomorphic style of decoration was used to decorate small objects by warrior-herdsmen, whose economy was based on breeding and herding animals, supplemented by trade and plunder. Animal art is a more general term for all art depicting animals. Eastern styles Scythian art makes great use of animal motifs, one component of the "Scythian triad" of weapons, horse-harness, and Scythian-style wild animal art. The cultures referred to as Scythian-style included the Cimmerian and Sarmatian cultures in European Sarmatia and stretched across the Eurasian steppe north of the Near East to the Ordos culture of China. These cultures were extremely influential in spreading many local versions of the style. Steppe jewellery features various animals including stags, cats, birds, horses, bea ...
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Islamic Art
Islamic art is a part of Islamic culture and encompasses the visual arts produced since the 7th century CE by people who lived within territories inhabited or ruled by Muslim populations. Referring to characteristic traditions across a wide range of lands, periods, and genres, Islamic art is a concept used first by Western art historians since the late 19th century. Public Islamic art is traditionally non- representational, except for the widespread use of plant forms, usually in varieties of the spiralling arabesque. These are often combined with Islamic calligraphy, geometric patterns in styles that are typically found in a wide variety of media, from small objects in ceramic or metalwork to large decorative schemes in tiling on the outside and inside of large buildings, including mosques. Other forms of Islamic art include Islamic miniature painting, artefacts like Islamic glass or pottery, and textile arts, such as carpets and embroidery. The early developments of Isla ...
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Indus
The Indus ( ) is a transboundary river of Asia and a trans-Himalayan river of South and Central Asia. The river rises in mountain springs northeast of Mount Kailash in Western Tibet, flows northwest through the disputed region of Kashmir, Quote: "Kashmir, region of the northwestern Indian subcontinent. It is bounded by the Uygur Autonomous Region of Xinjiang to the northeast and the Tibet Autonomous Region to the east (both parts of China), by the Indian states of Himachal Pradesh and Punjab to the south, by Pakistan to the west, and by Afghanistan to the northwest. The northern and western portions are administered by Pakistan and comprise three areas: Azad Kashmir, Gilgit, and Baltistan, ... The southern and southeastern portions constitute the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. The Indian- and Pakistani-administered portions are divided by a "line of control" agreed to in 1972, although neither country recognizes it as an international boundary. In addition, China became ...
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Bronze Age
The Bronze Age is a historic period, lasting approximately from 3300 BC to 1200 BC, characterized by the use of bronze, the presence of writing in some areas, and other early features of urban civilization. The Bronze Age is the second principal period of the three-age system proposed in 1836 by Christian Jürgensen Thomsen for classifying and studying ancient societies and history. An ancient civilization is deemed to be part of the Bronze Age because it either produced bronze by smelting its own copper and alloying it with tin, arsenic, or other metals, or traded other items for bronze from production areas elsewhere. Bronze is harder and more durable than the other metals available at the time, allowing Bronze Age civilizations to gain a technological advantage. While terrestrial iron is naturally abundant, the higher temperature required for smelting, , in addition to the greater difficulty of working with the metal, placed it out of reach of common use until the end o ...
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Silk Road
The Silk Road () was a network of Eurasian trade routes active from the second century BCE until the mid-15th century. Spanning over 6,400 kilometers (4,000 miles), it played a central role in facilitating economic, cultural, political, and religious interactions between the Eastern world, East and Western world, West. The name "Silk Road", first coined in the late 19th century, has fallen into disuse among some modern historians in favor of Silk Routes, on the grounds that it more accurately describes the intricate web of land and sea routes connecting East Asia, East and Southeast Asia, the South Asia, Indian subcontinent, Central Asia, the Middle East, East Africa and Southern Europe, Europe. The Silk Road derives its name from the highly lucrative trade of silk, silk textiles that were Silk industry in China, produced almost exclusively in China. The network began with the Han dynasty, Han dynasty's expansion into Central Asia around 114 BCE, Protectorate of the Western Regio ...
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