Understanding Early Societies and Investigating Early Interactions: Origin, Significance and Transmission of the Bronze Plaques from the Tianshan Beilu cemetery, Eastern Xinjiang

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The Tianshan Beilu cemetery – the largest and earliest Bronze Age funerary context in Eastern Xinjiang, including 705 graves dating to ca. 2000-1300 BCE – has been widely recognized as a key-point in the early interactions system throughout Eurasia – the ‘Prehistoric Silk Road’. However, due to the failure to publish the excavation report, research has been mostly limited to a small group of painted pottery and bronze weapon-tools, while decorative and ritual objects remain virtually unknown. This paper aims to fill this gap by examining a body of decorated bronze plaques from Tianshan Beilu hosted at the Hami Museum. Evidence is investigated through a multi-disciplinary approach, combining archaeology, ethnography and environmental studies. Specifically, by analysing bronze plaques in light of the unpublished material from the Tianshan Beilu site’s excavator - Prof. Chang Xi’en -, and looking at them from a comparative ethnographic perspective, this study examines their features, archaeological context and function, in order to enhance the knowledge on the community’s cultural developments. Moreover, the analysis of the spatial distribution of these objects over a wider area - including Central and Eastern Asia - allows to explore prehistoric cross-regional interactions, with a special focus on rituals transmission.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 25863