Fall 2009 Events Calendar

November 30: Lecture: Bringing the Frontier to the Center: Empires and Nomads from Achaemenid Persia to Tang China

Speaker: Wu Xin
Location: Second Floor, Lecture Hall
Date: November 30, 2009
Time: 6:00pm

December 3: Lecture: The Rise and Fall of Old Europe

Speaker: David Anthony
Location: to be announced
Date: December 3, 2009
Time: 6:00pm

The Rise and Fall of Old Europe

This lecture is associated with the Lost World of Old Europe exhibition, currently showing at ISAW. Please see the Public Programs page of the exhibition website for more information.

December 7: Lecture: The Eurasian Currents of Transmission and Adaptation: Four Case Studies

Speaker: Anthony Barbieri-Low
Location: Second Floor, Lecture Hall
Date: December 7, 2009
Time: 6:00pm

The Eurasian Currents of Transmission and Adaptation: Four Case Studies

While there was demonstrated, though sporadic, cultural diffusion between the West and the Far East during the second millennium BCE, formation of larger territorial states, and then empires, in the first millennium BCE increased the incidence and speed of such transmissions. Moreover, the direction of these transmissions was fairly lopsided in the period before the Common Era. The vast majority of the transmissions of motifs, technologies, and cultural traits appear to have traveled from West to East. In this talk I want to look at four case studies of cultural transmission, which date from between 500 BCE to around 200 CE: glass eye-beads, Chinese patterned silks, Roman silver plate, and the Ionic capital. I would like to investigate, not necessarily how these features diffused or by what route, but how the receiving society chose to adapt (or not to adapt) these features to their own existing cultural preferences and repertoires.

December 8, 2009: Lecture:

Speaker: Lillian Tseng
Location: Second Floor, Lecture Hall
Date: December 8, 2009
Time: 6:00pm

December 9: Lecture: Alexander the Great and Dionysios in India: The Greek Interaction with Early Indian Buddhist Art

Speaker: Osmund Bopearachchi
Location: Second Floor, Lecture Hall
Date: December 9, 2009
Time: 6:00pm

Alexander the Great and Dionysios in India: The Greek Interaction with Early Indian Buddhist Art

Alexander the Great’s conquest of the eastern satrapies of the Persian Empire drastically changed the geo-political map of the region and had far reaching consequences. Towards the middle of the 3rd century BC, Diodotus, the satrap of Bactria and Sogdiana, revolted against his Seleucid master and established the so-called Graeco-Bactrian kingdom, the most significant political event in Central Asia since the death of Alexander the Great. The autonomy that these Greek rulers enjoyed in Central Asia and North-West India is demonstrated not only by their coin types, but also by their art and architecture, as seen in the meticulously planned Greek city of Aï Khanoum and the sculptures of Greek gods, philosophers and athletes found within. The Greek inscriptions discovered at Aï Khanoum, Kandahar and Kuliab are a testimony to the language they kept alive for several centuries.

By the time the Kushan, successors of the Greeks in Central Asia and India, reached their zenith, cultural interactions with the Hellenistic, Iranian and Indian worlds in these frontier regions gave birth to a progressive Indianization. Aside from incorporating Greek architectural forms, Buddhist artists in Central Asia and Gandhara were also inspired by Greek gods such as Dionysus, the god of wine and the inspirer of ritual madness and ecstasy, who was known in classical mythology for his travel to India. Gandharan Buddhist art is endowed with numerous depictions of Dionysiac scenes, which became very popular in the Kushan period, where Dionysus is often accompanied by his companion Silenos, satyrs, Pan, and other fertility deities. Several vain attempts were made to explain the symbolic significance of these Dionysiac scenes from a Buddhist perspective. An unpublished Buddhist stûpa found in the middle Swat Valley may help elucidate the meaning of these scenes. Echoes of the 4th century BC Alexandrian conquest continued to reverberate for another six centuries, leaving a lasting impression of the past in the minds and behaviors of the various populations in the region. The depictions related to Dionysus, the god of ecstasy and intoxication, reflect how cultural interactions with the Hellenistic world in these frontier regions gave birth to the emergence of a composite iconography.

December 10: Lecture: Attic Pottery in Scythian Graves?

Speaker: Friederike Fless
Location: Second Floor, Lecture Hall
Date: December 10, 2009
Time: 6:00pm

Attic Pottery in Scythian Graves?

Attic pottery and Scythian gold are well known ancient artefacts. The archaeological context and the cultural context in Antiquity – especially in the Black Sea Region - are less well known.

A number of Greek poleis on the eastern Crimea formed an alliance in the early 5th century, creating a unique situation of cultural contacts in the Bosporan Kingdom on both sides of the Cimmerian Bosporus. The character of this alliance was dramatically altered when the dynasty of the Spartocids took over power in 438/37. This resulted in a 'territorial state' in the late 5th and early 4th centuries, which extended to the eastern Crimea and the Taman peninsula. This 'territorial state' included not only Greek cities, but also non-Greek tribes.

Inhabitants of the Bosporan Kingdom were confronted with settlements of non-Greek tribes outside its borders; relations between the groups varied, over the course of history, from peaceful to discordant. The northern Black Sea region was the showplace of complex constellations of cultural interaction. This activity in the Bosporan Kingdom cannot simply be reduced to a contrast of opposites such as Greek/non-Greek or Greek/Scythian. The situation in the region of Pontos is, therefore, characterized by anything but a clash of cultures; Greeks and non-Greek tribes, “Scythians” co-existed.

As a result, the culture of the Bosporan Kingdom was not in keeping with standard notions of what Greek or Scythian culture was; it can only be understood by interpreting the concrete political and cultural situation there at the time. What manifested itself in the Bosporan Kingdom was a new sort of culture, one that flexibly used imported objects, contextualized them in a local manner and, in the process, developed new, individual forms of expression. Greek forms generally dominate, but they were also used to relay utterly non-Greek subject matter and ideas.

One of the main questions of the lecture is: What, though, were the implications of these specific cultural settings in terms of the impact on the material culture of the time? Therefore the focus of my lecture lays on the Scythian Gold, the imported attic Vases, and the contexts, in which these objects were integrated.

December 11: Lecture: "So that all the cultivated lands of Bukhara would be inside those walls" – New research perspectives on Western Central Asian oasis walls and territorial fortifications

Speaker: Soeren Stark
Location: Second Floor, Lecture Hall
Date: December 11, 2009
Time: 6:00pm

"So that all the cultivated lands of Bukhara would be inside those walls" – New research perspectives on Western Central Asian oasis walls and territorial fortifications

Impressive linear barriers are a widespread phenomenon in many parts of the Old World and constitute a recurrent element in 'pre-modern' conceptions of frontier from Roman Britain to Northern China.

Similar barrier-walls are attested both by written sources and archaeological data in Western Central Asia. Thus, spectacular oasis walls once have surrounded large parts of the cultivated hinterland of major urban centres (e.g. Bukhara, Samarkand, Chach, Balkh, etc.). Other barriers blocked important corridors such as the western passage into Fergana or the corridor between Ustrushana and Sogdia. However, compared to their famous Roman or Chinese counterparts, the barrier-walls in Western Central Asia are much less studied and, therefore, confront us with a number of problems.

This lecture presents perspectives and first results of an ongoing research project on oasis walls and territorial fortifications in Sogdia. In particular, it will address questions regarding the dating, the historical context and the functions of these remarkable fortifications.

December 15: Lecture: Comparing Cultural Configurations: Astrology and Divination in Cicero’s De divinatione and Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae

Speaker: Darrel Rutkin, Visiting Research Scholar
Location: Second Floor, Lecture Hall
Date: December 15, 2009
Time: 6:00pm