Focused on triangles and circles: some peculiarities of the incised pottery decoration of the Hellenistic period in Central Asia
Abstract
The pottery traditions of prehistoric Central Asia, with some minor exceptions (as widespread matt painted ware of the Yaz I period, for instance), typically did not feature painted, stamped or relief decoration. Most of the well-studied Bronze Age and Early Iron Age wheel-thrown wares were simple, undecorated.
Various decorative techniques on a wider scale were employed for the first time only in the Hellenistic period. While rare relief or mold-made decoration is clearly of the Greek Hellenistic origin ("Megarian bowls" etc.) and was introduced to Bactria only after Alexander the Great, the incised ornamentation, prominent on the later Kushan wares, may had had more complicated background.
Among the motives that occur on the Hellenistic pottery of Bactria and adjacent regions, specific geometric patterns - such as triangles, small circles, or both combined - appear, even if rarely. In this paper, various aspects of these specific motives, their origin, semantics, spatial distribution and later use and developments will be addressed.
Latest finds show that this type of decoration may help with dating and classification of newly surveyed sites as the Hellenistic ones, especially in those cases, where the most typical forms of the given period are lacking. The hypothesis about such chronological sensitivity of the geometric patterns needs to be further evaluated and verified.