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G.G. Korol (Moscow) – Or nithomorphic Motifs of Medieval Artistic Metal from the Sayan-Altai and Tien Shan

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Abstract

The article examines the most salient ornithomorphic motifs of artistic metalwork from the Sayan-Altai region with the adjacent territories and the Northern Tien Shan of the late 1st – early 2nd millennium AD. The artefacts include most common items of horseman’s belt decorations, as well as some female attributes whose decor features images of fantastic phoenix bird and flying duck. The first image is known in two main iconographic variants indicating their origins: the art of China and that of Central Asia/Middle East. Both variants are used in two stable compositions with paired (confronting) birds either near the central tree or without it. Images of single phoenixes, which have no analogies, are known only in the Sayan-Altai region. Conditional analogies to them have been found in the rock art of Central and Inner Asia. Phoenix figurines decorating pin tops predominate in the Sayan-Altai region. The author considers the image of a flying duck in its plastic embodiment based on the case of two-piece clasps, widespread in the Sayan-Altai with the adjacent territories. This image provides a particular example of the absence of a specific cultural impulse-influence on the Northern Tien Shan. Both regions share the popularity of small forms of artistic metal and the time-specific appearance of the decorative style with its syncretism. What was specific for each of the regions is the predominance of certain variants of iconography associated primarily with the key directions of cultural influences and peculiarities of the perception of images. Apparently, the centres of production of urban culture in the Northern Tien Shan were not the sources of penetration of artistic metal into the Sayan- Altai region. The considered compositions testify rather to the general directions of the cultural influence of Middle Eastern/Central Asian art as a whole, primarily through the Sogdian masters who settled to the east. At the same time, the purely Chinese style of the phoenix image is recorded only on single Sayan-Altai finds and its transformation took place under the “western” influence. A probable reverse cultural impulse (from the western part of the Sayan-Altai) can be noted only on one version of the composition of phoenixes facing each other. The influence from the eastern part of the Sayan-Altai cannot be traced in the examined materials.

Keywords

Sayan-Altai and adjacent territories, Northern Tien Shan, small artistic metalwork, décor, ornithomorphic motifs, rock images, Middle Ages.

Galina G. Korol

Institute of Archaeology Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia

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