The Steppes: Crucible of Eurasia - units.muohio.edu - Miami University

Katheryn M. Linduff, Department of Anthropology and Department of the History of Art and
Architecture, University of Pittsburgh (linduff@pitt.edu)
Belt Buckles: Metallurgical and Iconographic Markers of Distinction
Four thousand years ago cultures emerged in the area known variously as eastern Eurasia,
Inner Asia, the beifang (北方), the Northern Zone, or the Northern Frontier. Delineated by
Chinese historians of the second century BCE and later as a never-never land, they gave these
peoples various names that marked them with a heritage distinct from peoples in the Dynastic
heartland. So troublesome was this area for the dynasts, that they eventually set up a system of
‘border states’ and walls in their north that acted as a political, economic, cultural and military
barrier reef meant to protect the ‘civilized’, agricultural states to their south.
The signs of this separation were marked as well with lightweight and portable artifacts
used in the beifang—small in scale but intricate in design—including belt plaques, appliqués for
clothing as well as accompanying horse gear, bits, strap crossers and bridle ornaments and
including chariot and cart fittings in gold, silver and bronze. These were neither Chinese nor
steppic in type or aesthetic, but rather were inspired by both models. These pieces bear motifs of
the wild animals and birds of prey that inhabited the region—tigers, boar, deer, ibex—and
including some domesticates such as camels, horses, donkeys and yaks. Even swords and knives
bear animal ornamentation on their hilts and pommels. These were created for the local
inhabitants and the market, and most often in Chinese foundries, as best as we can tell. They
have often been thought to document a mobile lifeway, although that notion is rethought here.
Study of the metallographic and casting technology used to produce these materials not
only offers a way to learn about their unique character, but also to discern distinctive cultural
patterns and the process of interregional exchange in the region that led to their creation. Belt
plaques, which I will particularly address here, were a very special category—not merely
decorative, but given their final resting place in burial; their special types and iconography; their
resourceful means of production; and their elaboration with inset semi-precious stones and
gilding or silvering, marked them for special use. By the end of the first millennium BCE, they
were in great demand in many areas of Eurasia and both the metallurgical and iconographic
content are distinctive residue of invention as a result of culture contact and exchange. At the
frontiers of the Chinese and Xiongnu Empires, they had become practicable signs of inter and
intra community differentiation.
Kenneth Lymer, Wessex Archaeology Ltd, Salisbury, UK (k.lymer@wessexarch.co.uk)
Animals Entangled in Art: The Lives of Zoomorphic Imagery in Central Asia during the 1st
Millennium BCE
The art of early nomadic archaeological cultures that roamed the steppes of Eurasia
during the 1st millennium BCE is characterised as exhibiting predominantly zoomorphic imagery,
the so-called Scytho-Siberian ‘animal style’. Moreover, it could be said that the concept of the
‘animal style’ was born in Central Asian academic studies. O.M. Dalton in his monograph on the
Oxus Treasure (1905) found objects recovered from what is known today as Tajikistan had a
style similar to known Scythian objects recovered from the regions around the Black Sea.
Furthermore, Dalton found this ‘Scythic art’ was also based upon animal decorative forms and
held a uniform canon of taste that was an unmistakable characteristic of the cultures ranging
from the Yenisei river to the Carpathians. The actual coining of the ‘animal style’, however,
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