Gonur Necropolis Grave Goods a Cultural Legacy

The Bactria-Margiana  Bronze Age Central Asian culture lasted from about 2,500 B. C. to 1,600 B.C.  The people there developed high skills in art, especially miniature art, are still a very powerful influence in jewelry designs, and domesticated the sheep, goat and horse.

One of their legacies is the large Gonur burial grounds that cover not only a wide space of ground but at least a millennium of time and embracing different cultures'  burial customs.  Some bodies were buried in the fetal position while some others were found buried in a hole with head down.  A few bodies were found with domestic animals buried near them.  A horse with head and hind quarters missing, and a portion of a lamb's body were found alongside human burials at the same level of excavation.

I am less interested in the method of reposing the body in its resting place than I am in the personal and household items buried with some of the bodies.  Combs, beads, amulets, seals, cosmetic containers, vases and pots are common items to find still in the graves or eroded out of the graves and revealed on the surface for scavengers to pick up and take to the market place.  Such unofficial picking over of ancient ruins brought the Bactria-Margiana culture to light.  But before the official excavations began, thousands of items had been found or illicitly dug up and put on the market in the cities of Central Asia.

My own collection of such items began while I lived in Kabul, Afghanistan.  Kabul is not so far from the central settlement of the Bactrian culture, closely related to the Margiana culture.  Two items of grave goods will illustrate the similarities.  Here is a photo of a ceramic vessel in my own collection:

Ancient Bactrian Ceramic Vessel from Bronze Age Central Asia

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This small pot or cup resembles other vessels of that area and historical period in that it does not have handles. According to the writing of Dr. Victor Sarianidi, the excavator of several Bronze Age sites of Central Asia, in his book on Margush, Ancient Oriental Kingdom in the Old Delta of the Murghab River, the potters of that time and place were more interested in mastering the creation of various shapes of clay vessels. As a result, we see very interesting fluting and elaborate pedestals, spouts and footings on otherwise fairly plain clay vessels. Some are compartmented, others are kidney shaped, still others are tall with narrow necks. 

This particular small vessel has uniform thickness in its wall; the bottom curves seamlessly into the sides, and the rim is flared in a very pleasing way. Inside the vessel we can see traces of the impression of very fine cross hatching that may have been made by finely woven cloth.The firing of the clay was advanced in this area. The kiln was built by digging a rectangular or oval pit lined with mud bricks. This was the fire chamber. Firewood was loaded into it through a hole. Inside this chamber a wall was built that supported the upper baking chamber where the vessels were placed. Holes were drilled in the floor of the baking chamber to allow the heat to come through, but the vessels were protected from open flame and ash. 

This item is complete, undamaged, after about 3,000 years.  Measurements: Rim 2.75 inches diameter; bottom 2.5 inches diameter; 2 inches high.

It is very like the bronze vessel found in Margiana, a related settlement to the North in what is now Turkmenistan, shown in this photo from the work by Dr. Victor Sarianidi, Necropolis of Gonur, plate 87.  

Grave Goods in the Bactria Margiana Archeological Complex

Grave Goods in the Bactria Margiana Archeological Complex

When we consider the utensils, ornaments and organic remains uncovered in excavating the ancient sites of human settlement, we classify those things that have been obviously put in the tomb or pit with the human remains as grave goods.   Ancient items discovered on the surface cannot be classified at all and museums usually are not interested in them for that reason.   Beads are the items commonly found in abundance in the rubble of a ruined settlement and in the graves.  Such beads as these were found in East Iran's ruined settlements of that era.  Those settlements are related culturally to the Margiana sites, according to the archeologist, Dr. Victor Sarianidi.

Casual explorers of ancient sites have gathered such objects through the centuries, and that is how antiquities show up in merchant shops in the countries where people have lived in settlements since the waning of the New Stone Age.   Such archeological material also comes onto the market through clandestine digs, of course.  Once the items are on the market with no context with which to identify the items, again, the museum loses interest and the items pass into the hands of dealers.  The dealers display them in market places of the Middle East where these cultures first sprang up.  And from there, the travelers and collectors buy them.  When I lived in Afghanistan, where Bactria is located, I found these unidentifiable pieces in dealer's shops and only many years later learned that they came from ancient Bactria, not just the Bactrian period of Alexander the Great's conquest of Persia.

The Bactria Margiana Archeological Complex, BMAC, includes sites in East Iran.  Some of the identical cultural products found in both areas are these spindle whorls or loom weights marked with circular designs.  They were found strung with beads.  The ones shown in the photo below are from Bactria, and may date from late antiquity, having been formed in the old way.   However, since grave goods are generally better preserved than items that have been left among the general ruins, these well-preserved spindle whorls or loom weights or beads may date from as long ago as four thousand five hundred years ago.  If they were simply made in later Bactria in the ancient pattern, they could date from as recent as one thousand five hundred years ago.

The texture, weight and appearance of these pieces closely resemble ivory or a very dense bone or shell.  They are not made of stone, glass or ceramic.  According to Dr. Victor Sarianidi, who excavated a large part of the BMAC sites in Turkmenia and some in Afghanistan, ivory materials were discovered in East Iran and in Margiana.   

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References:

Victor Sarianidi, Necropolis of Gonur, Athens, 2007
Victor Sarianidi, Margiana and Protozoroastrism, Athens, 200-
Giancarlo Ligabue and Sandro Salvatori, Bactria, Venice, 198-
Lois Sherr Dubin, The History of Beads, New York, 1987
Robert K. Liu, Collectible Beads, Vista, 1995

Burial Customs in Ancient Margiana

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Thanks to my archeologist friend, Dr. Victor Sarianidi of the Institute of Archeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow, the burial customs of one of the excavated sites in Margiana are well-documented in English in two of his published works: Margiana and Protozoroastrism, and Necropolis of Gonur.

In Gonur Necropolis, Sarianidi found two different burial rites, one in shallow pit graves with the body simply laid in the earth.  The other burial rite was elaborate, with a ritual cleansing of the grave by burning or cleansing with gypsum, a kind of white wash before the deceased was laid in the deeper pit.

The second rite described above also was found to contain partial burials.  That is, the body was brought there for burial after the bones had been stripped and often parts of the skeleton was left.  Victor was led to consider and then to decide that these rites developed over the next few hundred years into the spirituality of the Zoroastrians.   The purifying of the grave in order to protect the earth from the pollution of receiving a dead body and then the burial of the remaining parts from a body that had been exposed for time before being laid in the earth are still practiced where the Parsees (Persians) are free to practice them.  When I lived in Karachi, there was an area near the Arabian Sea where the Parsees still laid their recently deceased on raised platforms until their burial rites could be performed in the traditional way.

The ancient culture that is now called the Bactria Margiana Archeological Complex  was once a lively cultural region  that included settlements from Anatolia in Turkey to the Indus Valley and from Turkmenistan to East Central Iran.  The people in this cultural complex were not uniform in their artistic expression or in burial practices.  But they shared enough to show a strong relationship among the excavated relics of their settlements.  The archeologists variously name the people proto-Iranians, Indo-Iranians, proto-Zoroastrians, Persians, Indo-Persians and perhaps other names.  The area now bearing the widely accepted name of BMAC or Bactria Margiana Archeological Complex is also called Outer Iran.

In any of the names, there is the association with the people now known as Persians or Iranians, which still includes a huge portion of that very same area that BMAC encompassed.    Certainly Iran itself, along with Afghanistan and parts of India, Pakistan and Turkmenistan are included.  Where we see the old Iranian religion persisting into the present in communities consisting of *cradle Zoroastrians,* that is to say, people who are of that belief system by birth, we recognize language and customs that can be traced back to the time before Alexander's conquest of Persia.

In a coming blog, we will examine some of the utensils, animals, jewelry, and other important cultural objects that are buried with the dead of Gonur in Margiana in particular.

Who Lived in Bactria-Margiana?

Indo-Iranians of Early Central Asia

The earliest archeological records show that the people of the period 2,500 B.C. to 1,600 B.C. came from the West and settled in the desert oases of Central Asia.  Due to the work of the Russians' studies in comparative linguistics, but most of all due to their archeological excavations, we know that the Bactrians shared the physiognomy of the Indo-Iranians.  For that reason, the archeologist who worked the longest and dug up many of the sites, Dr. Victor Sarianidi, calls them proto-Iranians, or *preceding Iranians.*  

This post is intended to be sketchy and not scholarly.  I do not want your eyes to glaze over.  I welcome your additions to the discussion.  There is much to be added.

It almost seems that these Indo-Iranians of Central Asia came Eastward and stopped  only when they encountered the lower reaches of the Himalayas.  Just to the north of Kabul Afghanistan is Bactria, one of the richest archeological sites.  But along their path Eastward, from Anatolia, the high plateau in Turkey, through Elam near the Persian Gulf, then across the desert of present day Iran, they established  settlements along the way.   In addition to Bactria, at almost the same time, they settled in a place along the major river in Margiana, which is now in Turkmenistan.  This is now a rich source for archeological artifacts that reveal much about their mindset, their burial customs and their rites of worship.  Apart from the citadel with a temple, a palace and defensive towers in thick walls surrounding the residences, Dr. Sarianidi found a huge burial ground which he named the Gonur Necropolis.   

Excavating, cataloging and interpreting the contents of the graves occupied Victor's work for at least the last decades of his working life.  Through his work we learn about who lived in the settlement of Gonur in Margiana by studying how they died and were buried.  Amulets, beads, seals, household items and even animals were buried with or near their owner.  We will explore this in upcoming blogs.  We can begin with the personal items that were carried to the grave with the body.   Perhaps most important to the deceased were the amulets they wore in death, pieces such as this:

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First we know that beads much like these in the photo below were buried with the owner.  Possibly a hundred thousand Bactrian style beads were clandestinely and officially excavated and collected by museums or sold to collectors, the authorized excavations placing their finds in the care of a museum; the other kind of excavator sold his finds to the local antiquities dealer.

Ancient carnelian beads from the Bactria-Margiana Archeological Complex

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But apart from making the most popular style of beads from the most treasured stones along the trade routes that began to flourish in that region by 2,500 B.C., these people also developed a high culture with a ruling class, a clergy, temple worship, elaborate rituals concerning burials and monumental architecture.  

As practical contributions to the all humankind, they domesticated the precursor of sheep and goats and then bred to differentiate the species.  Above all their greatest contribution to animal husbandry was domesticating the horse.  

We will explore the burial customs in our next blog, because so much of their archeological record is contained in the Gonur necropolis in Margiana.    

References: 

Victor Sarianidi, Necropolis of Gonur, Athens, 2007

Giancarlo Ligabue and Sandro Salvatori, Bactria, Venice, 198-

A Shared Culture of Ornamentation

The ancient culture of Bactria along the Amu Darya river (now in Afghanistan), the Margiana culture along the Murghab river (now in Turkmenistan), the proto-Iranian culture in the deserts south of the Caspian all reveal enough strong parallels in ornamentation that some archeologists have grouped them into one of the following appellations: Bactria-Margiana Archeological Complex (BMAC), Outer Iranian culture, or proto-Iranian culture. Whether the shared cultural items and ornamental motifs arrived through exchange or whether they were brought into new areas by immigrants is still being debated by the scholars. I learned only today that very recently the Iranian archeologists have named the finds from the Kerman region (located within the boundaries of modern Iran) the *Jiroft* culture. It is dated as contemporary with the Bactria-Margiana culture.

From the published photos of some of the finds (the publication is recent; I do not know when the artifacts were excavated), I see a continuity in the mythical motifs of winged serpents fighting lions such as in this piece from the article from http://www.payvand.com/news/11/Nov/1049.html The image is somewhat related to the image of the serpents eating a goat in my last blog at this site.

One of the glaring differences between the cultural output of the Bactria-Margiana and that of the Jiroft culture is the table with symbols that appear to be script from the ruins in Jiroft, in the Kerman region, whereas there has never been a scrap of anything that might be construed as writing in the Bactria-Margiana finds.


Above: the tablet from the Jiroft site is more like script than anything found in the tons of artifacts removed from the Bactria-Margiana sites. Below: this item from Jiroft is very like the images of the myths and symbols expressed on the BMAC material.



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The Signet Seals of Pre-Literate Early Bactria-Margiana

No actual alphabetic messages have yet been found on any artifact excavated from or found on the surface of one of the sites of the Bactria-Margiana Archeological Complex. Geographically, the more or less agreed upon boundaries of BMAC  area would be Southern Turkmenistan, Eastern Iran and most of Afghanistan reaching over to the Indus Valley in what is now Pakistan. The time frame of the most meaningful cultural items produced by these mobile but not migrant farmers and animal domesticators that inhabited the oases and river plains was about 4,500 years ago to 3,600 years ago. They did not disappear after this time, but other cultures blended with theirs so thoroughly that the area congealed into a trade system that spread many of their products far and wide throughout the Middle East, often including parts of Europe, and almost always including North Africa and the Arabian Gulf.

But in the pre-literate period for the Bactria-Margiana culture -- 4,500 - 3,600 years ago -- the people used seals with cultic or at least mythical symbols. In the case of stone seals, the images were engraved; in the case of bronze, copper or occasionally silver seals, the images were cast. The seals were usually furnished with a device that would allow the owner to wear or carry the seal. In fact, so many of the seals were decorated with mythical images that Dr. Sarianidi, the excavator of much of the archeological material, calls them amulets, and after long field experience with the amulets, he has interpreted the meanings of the amulets. His work is published in Myths of Ancient Bactria-Margiana on its Seals and Amulets.

One of the more artistic of the published seals is the copper image of a wolf killing a goat. The device for hanging the seal on a cord is the loop in the center of the image that shows as a protrusion in that area.

The seal in the photo is a naturalistic one, and may not carry any mythical meaning. The more abstract seals that I hope to explore in later blogs will carry the proto-Zoroastian message that was later expressed in the old Indo-European language in their sagas.

This side is the side that would have been held by the loop while the opposite side was pressed into the clay or wax in order to seal a message or a possession, leaving an embossed expression in the sealing medium.

These seals were made beautiful because they were an adornment of the person, expressing the person's identity, status and in some cases, their religion, in a special amulet.

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