Art and Iconography

This talk explores the slippages between ancient Mesopotamia's system(s) of aesthetics and Western philosophical aesthetics, with particular attention to Immanuel Kant's Critique of Judgment and William Hogarth's The Analysis of Beauty. It also explores Mesopotamia's visual arts as art for the senses, that is, art designed for and intimately entangled with bodily, sensorial, and emotional experiences.

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The talk provides an overview of the research on the elite Saka burial mounds in the foothills of the Tarbagatai mountains, conducted by the Shilikta-Tarbagatai archaeological expedition under the leadership of Prof.  Abdesh Toleubaev, starting in 2018. The main emphasis is on the latest archaeological materials identified during excavations at the sites of Shilikty, Koktubek, and Eleke Sazy.

The Taksay-1 Kurgan Complex is located on the territory of the Terekty district of the West Kazakhstan Region and consists of six kurgans. In 2012, an archaeological team from the West Kazakhstan Local History Museum, led by Dr. Yana Lukpanova, discovered and excavated a unique elite burial of a woman from a privileged stratum of the early nomadic society, the Sarmatians, dating back to the 5th century BCE.

During the Saka/Scythian time, territories of the steppe region of Kazakhstan was occupied by the Tasmola culture (800-500 BCE), which was discovered and identified in 1966, by the Kazakh archaeologist Mir Kadyrbaev. Currently, our understanding of the Tasmola culture has been enriched with discoveries of new types of archaeological sites, i.e. "royal" mounds, settlements, stone statues. Their scientific analyses clarify cultural and chronological periodization of the Saka era in Central Kazakhstan.

This paper examines animal identification in art, an aspect that needs to be addressed in any discussion of ancient animal imagery. Although the identification result can significantly influence the interpretation of iconography, a systematic approach has rarely been adopted and controversial depictions have often left researchers perplexed and unsure about how to decide between different suggestions. Therefore, a sound methodological model which integrates data from the disciplines of archaeology, zoology, and anthropology in a truly interdisciplinary endeavour is needed.