Archaeological Research in Asia xxx (xxxx) xxxxxx

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Archaeological Research in Asia

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Manufacturing and trade of Asian elephant ivory in Bronze Age Middle Asia.
Evidence from Gonur Depe (Margiana, Turkmenistan)
Dennys Frenez
Department of History and Cultures, University of Bologna, Via San Vitale 28/30, 48121 Ravenna, Italy

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: This paper presents the detailed stylistic and functional analysis of a large collection of artifacts made from Asian
Ivory elephant ivory discovered at the Oxus Civilization site of Gonur Depe in southern Turkmenistan. Artifacts in
Asian elephant ivory of Asian elephant from Bronze Age sites in Middle Asia have usually been considered as evidence for the
Bronze Age import of nished items from the greater Indus Valley. The detailed study of the Gonur Depe ivories has instead
Oxus Civilization
proven that there are signicant morphological and stylistic dierences between these artifacts and those found
Indus Valley
at contemporaneous sites in the Indus Valley. This evidence raises important questions about the provenance of
the raw material and about the origin and training of the craftsmen who manufactured the objects. Detailed
research in textual sources about traditional arts and crafts in South Asia and in classical and medieval com-
mentaries about ivory carving, integrated with ethnographic data about skilled crafting in traditional societies,
has led to propose new hypotheses about the complex socioeconomic and cultural organization of manufacturing
and trade of Asian elephant ivory during the Bronze Age.

1. Introduction
This study of a signicant collection of artifacts made from the ivory
of Asian elephants (Elephas maximus Linnaeus, 1758) discovered at the
Oxus Civilization site of Gonur Depe in southern Turkmenistan is part of
wider research by the author about trade exchanges and cultural in-
teractions between the greater Indus Valley and other regions of Middle
Asia during the Bronze Age, which is based on a comprehensive review
of the published archaeological and textual evidence upgraded through
new detailed studies of specic groups of materials (Frenez, 2011;
Frenez and Vidale, 2015; Vidale and Frenez, 2015; Frenez et al., 2016;
Frenez et al., in press) (Fig. 1).1
The objects in Asian elephant ivory found at Gonur Depe have al-
ready been partially published and briey described in several volumes
and papers by the late Professor Victor I. Sarianidi (2002a, 2005, 2007,
2008, 2010). In October 2008, the author documented in detail all iv-
ories from Gonur Depe available in Ashgabad at the National Museum
and at the Museum of Fine Arts and in Mary at the Regional Museum.
The study combined morphological and stylistic analyses with the ex-
amination of the manufacturing traces still visible on the objects.2
Artifacts of Asian elephant ivory found at Bronze Age sites west of
the Indus Valley are usually considered as evidence for the import of
nished items from the Indus region (Cleuziou and Tosi, 2000: 2730,
pl. 32; Sarianidi, 2002a: 154; Dpper and Schmidt, 2013: g. 10). In
specic cases, scholars have proposed that ivory objects obtained from
the Indus Valley were reworked locally to be eventually remarketed
(Potts, 1993, 1994, 2000: 126127). This systematic examination of the
Asian elephant ivory artifacts found at Gonur Depe provides evidence
for a much more complex model of production and exchange of these
prized objects and solid new data for future research on the subject.
2. The Indus Civilization and its external trade
The Indus (or Harappan) Civilization, developed along the Indus
River basin and in the neighboring regions of present-day Pakistan and
northwestern India between ca. 2600/25001900 BCE, was acknowl-
edged almost one century ago as a cultural complex contemporaneous
to the other Bronze Age state-level urban civilizations in Egypt,
Mesopotamia, and the Iranian Plateau (Marshall, 1924; Lahiri, 2006).
Nonetheless, due to the lack of success in decoding its writing system,
fundamental aspects of its ethnolinguistic, sociopolitical and economic
organization and their development through time remain still rather

E-mail address: dennys.frenez@unibo.it.

1
In this paper, the term Middle Asia is used after the denition provided by G.L. Possehl in his seminal paper about the so-called Middle Asian Interaction Sphere to indicate the vast
region stretching from the eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea to the Indus River basin, including also Mesopotamia, the Persian Gulf and southeastern Arabia, the Iranian Plateau
and Central Asia (Possehl, 2002: 215; Possehl, 2007).
2
Permission granted by the late Prof. Victor I. Sarianidi and Dr. Nadezhda Dubova to the Italian Project in the Murghab Area headed by the late Prof. Maurizio Tosi and with the eld
direction of Dr. Barbara Cerasetti.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ara.2017.08.002
Received 23 December 2016; Received in revised form 20 August 2017; Accepted 28 August 2017
2352-2267/ 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Please cite this article as: Frenez, D., Archaeological Research in Asia (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ara.2017.08.002
D. Frenez
Fig. 1. Map of Middle and South Asia with locations of Gonur Depe, major Indus Civilization sites, and other sites mentioned in the text.
elusive.
The study of interactions between the greater Indus Valley and other
regions and polities of Middle Asia has played a central role in research
about the Indus Civilization from its very beginning. The protohistoric
dating of this cultural complex was in fact rst proposed on the basis of
parallels between the inscribed seals that were coming to light at
Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro and those previously found in Iran and
Mesopotamia (Mackay, 1925; Gadd, 1932). Moreover, by the middle of
the twentieth century and as a consequence of the still prevailing co-
lonialist environment of the time, the large urban centers of the Indus
Valley were being interpreted as a secondary urban phenomenon
deeply inuenced by more advanced western civilizations (e.g.,
Wheeler, 1968: 25 and 135).
Today, it seems evident that the development of this protohistorical
urban culture in the greater Indus Valley represented only the apex of
local traditions with roots back into the Neolithic period (Jarrige, 1991;
Meadow, 1998; Possehl, 1999). The Indus Civilization resulted in fact
from a long process of coherent selection, assimilation and eventual
crystallization of cultural traits from dierent regional cultures spread
over a vast and highly dierentiated territory. The rapid inclusion of
these communities as part of an integrated sociopolitical, economic and
cultural superstructure took place in the centuries between ca. 2800
and 2600/2500 BCE (Algaze, 1993: 224225; Durrani et al., 1995;
Kenoyer, 2001; Vidale, 2005a). During these formative phases, there is
discontinuous evidence for long-distance interactions between the
greater Indus Valley and southeastern Iran, Mesopotamia and Central
Asia (Cortesi et al., 2008; Kenoyer, 2008; Jarrige et al., 2011; Frenez,
later in this paper). In the second half of the third millennium BCE, the
2
Archaeological Research in Asia xxx (xxxx) xxxxxx
Indus centers played instead a central role in dening, promoting and
possibly regulating trade exchanges throughout the entire Middle Asia
(Chakrabarti, 1990; Tosi, 1991; Possehl, 1996; Ratnagar, 2004;
Kenoyer, 2008; Frenez, 2011; Frenez et al., 2016; Mry et al., 2017),
with Indus artifacts that eventually reached the Near East and the
eastern Mediterranean (Peyronel, 2015; Ludvik et al., 2014; Ludvik
et al., 2015).
From 1900 BCE, the Indus Civilization began disaggregating as an
integrated cultural and socioeconomic system and by 1500 to 1300 BCE
the region returned to be a mosaic of local cultures each with specic
cultural traits (Shaer, 1993; Possehl, 2002: 237245; Kenoyer, 2005).
External trade suered from the gradual political and economic decline
of the Indus Civilization, which led to the temporary disruption and
eventual reorganization of the major interregional networks (Ratnagar,
2004: 283; Kenoyer, 2004; Reade, 2008: 1617).
Commercial exchanges between the Indus Valley and Central Asia
have already been broadly discussed in the general picture of long-
range trade during the Bronze Age (Masson, 1981; Possehl, 1996, 2002:
229235; Kenoyer, 2004; Kaniuth, 2010; Vidale, 2017: 4356). More-
over, the development of reciprocal cultural inuences between these
two regions in the last centuries of the third and the rst half of the
second millennium BCE has also been discussed (Ardeleanu-Jansen,
1991; Winkelmann, 1994; Possehl et al., 2004). However, the organi-
zation and mechanisms of implementation of these relations have yet to
be precisely decoded. The information obtained from the ivory objects
found at Gonur Depe provides solid data for better dening the stra-
tegies of cosmopolitan interaction developed and applied in Middle
Asia during the Bronze Age.
D. Frenez
3. Exchanges and interactions between the Indus and Oxus
Civilizations
The Oxus Civilization after the Greek name of the Amu Darya
River is also known as the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex
or BMAC. This civilization included the large urban centers and rural
settlements that ourished between ca. 2400 and 1600 BCE in the al-
luvial basin of the Amu Darya river in the northern plains of
Afghanistan (ancient Bactria of the Achaemenids) and in the endorheic
alluvial fan of the Murghab river in southern Turkmenistan (ancient
Margiana), with extensions into southern Uzbekistan and western
Tajikistan (Hiebert, 1994; Lamberg-Karlovsky, 2003, 2013; Vidale,
2017; for an updated chronology of Central Asia framing the Oxus Ci-
vilization in the unbroken cultural evolution of the region, see Vidale,
2017: 810, 18 and Table 1).
In the last centuries of the third millennium BCE, the urban centers
of the Oxus Civilization developed intense commercial and cultural
exchanges with the neighboring regions of the Indus Valley and the
Iranian plateau, but also with Mesopotamia, the Levant, and the Gulf
region, probably fostered by the existence in the mountains of Central
Asia of abundant sources of precious stones and minerals that were not
present in the alluvial basins of the great rivers (Potts, 1993, 1994;
Kohl, 2007: 244260; Bushmakin, 2007; Salvatori, 2008; Kaniuth,
2010; Vidale, 2017: 4456). However, the discovery in Bactria and
Margiana of seals and tablets bearing geometric and animal motifs that
have direct parallels in the Early Harappan levels of Harappa, Kunal,
Rehman Dheri and other contemporaneous sites in northern Baluchi-
stan, might predate the beginning of contacts with the Indus Valley to
the rst half of the third millennium BCE (for the seals in Bactria and
Margiana, see Sarianidi, 1998: cat. no. 1324, 1325, 13451354;
Masimov and Salvatori, 2008: 102 and g. 7.5.1; for those in the Indus
Valley and Baluchistan, see Allchin, 1986; Durrani et al., 1994-95;
Kenoyer, 2001; Khatri and Acharya, 2005).
Unfortunately, most of the objects testifying to commercial and
cultural relations between Central Asia and the Indus Valley appeared
in the antiquities market deprived of associations and discovery con-
texts (Ligabue and Salvatori, 1989; Sarianidi, 1998; Winkelmann, 2004;
Vidale, 2017). A number of new nds, however, have been recovered
during archaeological excavations at Gonur Depe, Altyn Depe, Kelleli 6
and Adji-Kui 9, in Margiana, and at Dashly-3 and Dzharkutan, in Bactria
(Rossi Osmida, 2007, 2011; Kaniuth, 2010; Lamberg-Karlovsky, 2013).
Indus artifacts discovered in Bactria and Margiana consist mainly of
ornaments made from semiprecious stones and faience, small con-
tainers in softstone, and a variety of objects made from ivory.
A number of Indus and Indus-related seals have also been found in
Central Asia, including some specimens actually imported from the
Indus Valley (Masson, 1981: g. 1, 2; Sarianidi, 2005: 258 and g.
114). Of particular signicance are several seals branded with the
distinctive Indus iconography of the Indian bison with the head lowered
(Bos gaurus Smith, 1827), but made using local stones and with the
animal represented following to the indigenous glyptic styles (for ex-
amples, see Sarianidi, 1998: cat. nos. 962, 1408, 1451, 1477, 1618;
Winkelmann, 2004: 127138 and cat. nos. I.4-01; II.1-02; II.1-03). In-
terestingly, the Indian bison is considered of having likely been the
brand of Indus merchants formally acting in external trade (Vidale,
2005b). This evidence lends support to the existence, at the end of the
third and into the rst centuries of the second millennium BCE, of a
specic phenomenon of hybridization of local glyptics with elements
of the Indus tradition, which has been observed also in other regions of
Middle Asia (Laursen, 2010; Vidale and Frenez, 2015; Frenez et al.,
2016, in press). Such hybridization possibly indicates the direct in-
tegration of Harappan trading families into the local societies and
cultures and/or their formal delegation of part of their business to local
agents (Fig. 2).
On the other hand, evidence of imports from Central Asia to the
Indus Valley comprises only a few miscellaneous small nds, including
3
Archaeological Research in Asia xxx (xxxx) xxxxxx
bronze pins and arrowheads, the ower-shaped head of a metal pin, the
steatite wig of a small composite gurine (Marshall, 1931: pl.
CXXVIII.28; Meadow, 2002), as well as several stone and metal seals
and their impressions on clay (Kenoyer, 2003: 412413; Franke, 2010).
As for the raw materials, the import of metals like silver, lead and tin is
dicult to quantify, while stones like lapis lazuli and turquoise seem to
have played only a minor role in the production of Indus ornaments.
The site of Shortughai, in the Kunduz region of the Oxus Valley, has
been interpreted as an Indus outpost established in Bactria to control
the extraction and trade of lapis lazuli (Possehl, 2004). However, the
amount of such stone found at the site seems remarkably limited con-
sidering the scale of its exploitation in Southwestern Asia during the
third millennium BCE, including southeastern Iran, Mesopotamia,
northwestern Syria and Egypt (Pinnock, 1988; D'Amato, 2000;
Casanova, 2013; Vidale and Lazzari, 2017).
4. Gonur Depe and the Indus Civilization
Gonur Depe is the largest of all Bronze Age settlements uncovered in
the endorheic fan of the Murghab River in southern Turkmenistan
(Sarianidi, 2008: 41). The site encompasses an area of about 55 ha and
consists of three main distinct areas, which cover a timespan between
ca. 2400 and 1600 BCE and include dierent occupational phases
(Vidale, 2017: 810, Table 1) (Fig. 3). A main, roughly elliptical, for-
tied complex labeled Gonur North, ca. 330 460 m, includes the so-
called Monumental Palace and its subsidiary buildings, several temples
and ritual areas, the so-called Royal Necropolis, and two major and
several smaller water reservoirs, all dating from ca. 2400 to 1900 BCE
(Sarianidi, 2002b, 2005: 31; Vidale, 2017: 9, Table 1). Most of the
elephant ivory objects found at Gonur Depe came from funerary
structures that can be dated to the last occupational phase of this area,
which according to material culture comparanda are considered con-
temporaneous to the upper levels of Altyn Depe, in southwestern
Turkmenistan, and Mohenjo-Daro, in the Sindh province of present-day
Pakistan (Table 1). A smaller, square complex labeled Gonur South (ca.
130 120 m), fortied with two series of massive concentric walls
with round towers along their perimeters, is located immediately south
of the main complex and can be dated between ca. 1900 and 1600 BCE
(Sarianidi, 1993; Vidale, 2017: 9, Table 1). A large necropolis, with just
more than three thousand graves of dierent type and dating, en-
compasses an area of ca. 10 ha about 200 m west of Gonur North
(Sarianidi, 2007).
The possibility of compiling a detailed list of artifacts imported to
Gonur Depe from the Indus Valley, or somehow related to dierent
Indus iconographies and productions, is presently limited by the ab-
sence of a systematic publication of the nds and by the lack of physical
and chemical analyses suitable for determining the origin of specic
raw materials. Among the published ceramic vessels there are only a
few complete specimens that can be positively related to the pottery
productions of Baluchistan and the Indus Valley (Sarianidi, 2002a: 93;
2007: 64 and g. 24). Other objects imported from the Indus Valley
and/or inspired to the Indus productions are some long and bleached
carnelian beads, ornaments in faience, and possibly also a few softstone
vessels with motifs inspired to the Indus iconographic tradition
(Sarianidi, 2002a: 125; Sarianidi, 2005: 278 and g. 127128;
Sarianidi, 2007: 116117 and gs. 211, 221).
An Indus origin is evident for a square stamp seal made of red
steatite found in the temple of the water of Gonur North, which bears
the image of a standing Asian elephant carved below an inscription
composed of eight Indus signs (Sarianidi, 2005: 258 and g. 114). The
number of signs in the inscription and its carving style broadly date the
seal to the last phase of the Indus Civilization, ca. 22001900 BCE
(Kenoyer and Meadow, 2010). A two-sided round amulet/seal made
from a yellow-brownish stone found at Gonur South belongs among the
previously discussed Indus hybrid seals with the image of an Indian
bison. Its recovery from archaeological context provides solid support
D. Frenez Archaeological Research in Asia xxx (xxxx) xxxxxx

Fig. 2. Stamp seals depicting the Indian bison (Bos gaurus) from the Indus Civilization site of Mohenjo-Daro (Parpola et al. 2010) and from other regions of Middle Asia (not in scale): (1)
Bactria, Ligabue collection (Winkelmann, 2004: cat. no. I.4-01); (2) Gonur Depe (Sarianidi, 2002a: 259); (3) Bactria, Ligabue collection (Winkelmann, 2004: cat. no. II.1-02); (4) Bactria,
Ligabue collection (Winkelmann, 2004: cat. no. II.1-03); (5) Gulf seal, The British Museum (Gadd, 1932: cat. no. 17); (6) Elam, Ligabue collection (Winkelmann, 2004: cat. no. I.4-02); (7)
Ur, The British Museum (Frenez et al., in press); (8) Salut ST1, Sultanate of Oman (Frenez et al., 2016).

also for the interpretation of other similar seals from private collections
(Sarianidi, 1998: cat. no. 1618; Sarianidi, 2002a: 259).
More complex is the interpretation of one anthropomorphic and one
theriomorphic sculpture found at Gonur North that have direct parallels
mainly at contemporaneous sites in the Indus Valley, but also in
southeastern Iran, and in the antiquities market. The unnished frag-
ment of a kneeling male gure, found in Room 132 of the Royal
Sanctuary of Gonur North (Sarianidi, 2005: 121122 and g. 30), clo-
sely resembles in its posture and sculpting style the series of kneeling
men found in the upper levels of Mohenjo-Daro, including the famous
priest-king, and a comparable specimen from Dholavira (Ardeleanu-
Jansen, 1984, 1991; Bisht, 2015: 591594 and g. 8, 306307). The
stone sculpture of a squatting ram, placed in Grave 3220 of the royal
necropolis of Gonur North to support the head of a deceased (Sarianidi,
2005: 250252 and g. 93), closely resembles a group of similar statues
found at Mohenjo-Daro, as well as one specimen property of the Me-
tropolitan Museum of Art (Ardeleanu-Jansen, 1987, 1991; Pittman,
1984: 8588 and g. 39).3
In the absence of detailed analyses of the carving techniques and of
the geological provenance of the stones used to manufacture all these
statues, it is impossible to positively establish whether they were local
productions or the result of exchanges. However, the local manu-
facturing of a kneeling man at Gonur Depe, the evident anities with
the gures embossed on silver vessels from Bactria, with comparable
pieces found in Sistan, and with the decoration of an alabaster vessel
3
Considering the paucity of objects of Indus origin traded in the antiquities market, the
squatting ram of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Pittman, 1984: 8588 and g. 39),
might have possibly originated from a plundered necropolis in Bactria rather than from a
site in India or Pakistan.

4
D. Frenez
Fig. 3. The archaeological complex of Gonur Depe with indication of the main areas and structures. Stars mark the graves and rooms that included objects in Asian elephant ivory
(modied after Sarianidi, 2008: 49, g. 7).
found at Dashly 3, in northern Afghanistan (Ardeleanu-Jansen, 1991:
pl. 148; Winkelmann, 1994; Dales, 1988: Possehl, 1996: 178179;
Kaniuth, 2010: g. 5), suggest the existence at the end of the third and
in the rst centuries of the second millennium BCE of an intercultural
sphere of shared beliefs that led to the local creation of similar cult
objects and ritual paraphernalia, rather than the mere exchange of
nished goods between Central Asia, Baluchistan and the Indus Valley.
5. Distribution and exploitation of Elephas maximus in the Bronze
Age
The results of this study are based on the careful examination of all
artifacts found at Gonur Depe up through the 2008 eld season and
generically labeled (Eng. elephant bones).
However, this category resulted including also a number of dierent
objects, mainly hairpins with their heads decorated with incised lines or
carved in the typical shape of a st, made from animal bones instead of
true ivory. All artifacts made from ivory were instead clearly manu-
factured from the tusks of Asian elephant (Elephas maximus Linnaeus,
1758).
Several indicators coalesce to enable identifying elephant and
specically Asian male elephants as the unique source used to pro-
duce the ivory objects discovered at Gonur Depe. In particular, the
5
Archaeological Research in Asia xxx (xxxx) xxxxxx
presence and arrangement of the so-called Schreger lines,4 the distinct
cone-in-cone pattern resulting from the continuous growing of the
elephant tusks, the occasional presence of residual traces of cementum
on the surface of a few objects, and the specic mode of surface ex-
foliation due to post-depositional processes, are characteristic of ele-
phant ivory (for an overview of ivory identication techniques, see
Espinoza and Mann, 1992; Campbell Pedersen, 2015: 42). Moreover, in
several cases the thorough examination of the size and orientation of
the cone-in-cone pattern made it possible to broadly reconstruct the
size, proportions and curvature of the tusk and to determine the portion
of the tusk from where the object was obtained. This latter information
testies to the use of ivory coming from male Elephas maximus instead
4
Tusks of both elephant and mammoth show a typical surface pattern of intersecting
arcs visible on cross-sections taken perpendicular to the longitudinal axis of the tusk. This
pattern, rst described by Bernard Schreger (1800), is termed in the gemological litera-
ture Schreger lines and consists of rhomb-shaped curvilinear lozenges created by the
regular intersections of gentle arcs of alternating brownish and yellowish striae. This
surface texture is an optical eect caused by the reection of light from the extremely ne
bers of the collagen protein, which are oriented in two distinct directions in the matrix
surrounding each dentine tubule. The Schreger lines are unique to elephant and mam-
moth ivory: the Schreger angles are obtuse in elephantine ivory (> 115 degrees), while in
mammoth ivory they are acute (> 90 degrees) (Espinoza and Mann, 1993; Bracco et al.,
2013).
D. Frenez Archaeological Research in Asia xxx (xxxx) xxxxxx

Table 1
Gonur Depe. Ivory artifacts ordered by discovery context and with indication of the associated nds [Keys: * = Plundered in antiquity; n.d. = Not described; M = Male; F = Female;
MN = Main Necropolis; RS = Royal Sanctuary; RN = Royal Necropolis; N = Northern burial ground; SW = Southwestern burial ground].

Context Loc. Sex Ivory items Associated items

Room 115 RS Stick-dice Unnished steatite statue of a kneeling man

Grave 575 * MN F Stick-dice 11 ceramic vessels, 1 st. beads, 1 st. vessel
Grave 1898 * MN M Stick-dice n.d.
Grave 2228 MN F Comb 7 ceramic vessels, 2 st. beads, 1 br. seal, 1 silver earring, 2 br. hairpins, 1 br. mirror.
Grave 2900 N M+F Gaming board (M): 27 ceramic vessels, 2 silver vessels, 1 silver cosmetic bottle, 1 silver bangle, 1 faience vessel, 2 faience bangles, 1
(> 60 y) Gaming pieces silver spoon, 1 silver pin, 1 double necklace (semiprecious st. beads and silver pendants), 6 br. vessels, 2 br. maceheads, 2
Comb (M) br. mirrors, 1 br. cosmetic bottle, 1 br. funnel, br. knife, 1 br. kidney vessel, 1 br. spear, 5 miscellaneous br. items, 31 int
Spoon arrowheads, 3 bone arrowheads, 1 st. composite statuette
Grave 3130 SW 3 rams Gaming board 8 ceramic vessels, 2 br. vessels, 1 br. cosmetic bottle, 1 faience cosmetic bottle, br. and semiprecious st. beads, br. dagger,
br. mirror, 2 br. harpoons.
Grave 3155 SW M+F Winding snake (M) 9 ceramic vessels, 1 stone miniature column, (M) 2 br. vessels, 1 st. cosmetic bottle, 1 st. plate, semiprecious st. beads, gold
Stick-dice (M) beads; (W) 3 ceramic vessels, 2 br. vessels, br. bangles, 1 br. ring, 1 st. cosmetic bottle, 1 br. mirror, semiprecious st. beads,
Gaming pieces (W) gold beads, 1 tc. gurine
Decorated discs
Grave 3210 * RN M Gaming board 30 large ceramic jars, 1 silver trumpet, 50 int arrowheads, 2 st. discs, 1 st. scepter, 1 st. horse gurine, st. beads, st.
Stick-dice animal gurines, gold beads, 1 st. composite statuette
Decorated discs
Grave 3220 * RN M Stick-dice 2 gold vessels, 17 silver vessels, 5 br. vessels, 2 ceramic vessels, 1 gold bangle, 1 br. and st. bracelet, 2 stone miniature
Gaming pieces columns, int arrowheads, 1 st. disc, 1 ram st. sculpture, 1 br. axe, 1 br. seal, 1 st. composite statuette, 44 int arrowheads,
Decorated discs 6 stone arrowheads
Grave 3235 * RN M Decorated plaques 2 gold vessels, 3 silver vessels, 2 br. vessels, 1 silver hairpin, 3 semiprecious st. and gold beads, 2 semiprecious st. and gold
ower, 1 st. cosmetic bottle, 1 st. scepter, 13 int arrowheads
Grave 3245 RN F Elephant tusk 1 br. bowl, 1 br. cosmetic spatula, 1 br. mirror, 1 st. vessel, 1 st. container, faience bangles, semiprecious st. beads, gold
Cosmetic spatula beads, st. needles
Decorated plaques
Grave 3310 RN 1 horse Gaming board n.d.

of Loxodonta africana, the former having smaller, straighter, and nar-
rower tusks (Banerjee et al., 2008; Campbell Pedersen, 2015: 3045).
No elephant bones have been found at Gonur Depe or at any other
sites of the Oxus Civilization to date (Moore, 1993; Moore et al., 1994;
Sarianidi, 2002a: 154). However, besides the nished ivory objects, the
large section of an elephant tusk (ca. 11 cm long and with a diameter
between ca. 15 and 17 cm) was discovered together with other artifacts
in elephant ivory in Grave 3245 at Gonur North (Sarianidi, 2010:
110111 and the related colour plate). The presence of Elephas maximus
is presently restricted to the Southeast Asia, from India and Nepal in the
west to Borneo in the east (Sukumar, 2003), but in historical times its
range extended eastward to the Pacic coast of China and westward to
the eastern Mediterranean shores of the Levant (Olivier, 1978;
Trautmann, 2015: 6895 and g. 1.3). Therefore, the correct inter-
pretation of the Gonur Depe ivories necessitates the identication of the
most likely source of ivory for the Bronze Age sites in Central Asia. In
fact, the Oxus Civilization had commercial links that extended from the
greater Indus Valley and Baluchistan to southeastern Arabia and
northwestern Syria (Kaniuth, 2010; Vidale, 2017).
Information about the distribution of the Elephas maximus in South
and Southwestern Asia during the Bronze Age is scanty and dis-
continuous. Nevertheless, the few elephant remains discovered in the
region, combined with archaeological evidence of ivory productions
during this period, and evaluated at the light of the dierent icono-
graphic and textual sources, provide a rather substantial scenario.
According to R. Sukumar (2003: 5758), elephants were present in the
Indus River basin at that time (ca. 3000-2000 BC) and this must have been
the northwestern limit of their distribution. [] There is no evidence that the
elephant's range extended further northwest of the Indus River basin. Herds
of an isolated sub-species of Asian elephant, called Syrian or Western
Asiatic elephant (Elephas maximus asurus), were instead almost certainly
living in restricted ecological zones of northwestern Syria from about
late Middle Bronze Age throughout the Early Iron Age, ca. 1700 to
700 BCE (Miller, 1986; Moorey, 1994: 117; Becker, 2005; Pflzner,
2013, 2016; akirlar and Ikram, 2016).5
The existence of this presently extinct sub-species of Asian elephant
was originally suggested by the discovery in Egypt of celebrative texts
describing royal hunts in northern Syria during the Late Bronze Age, ca.
15001200 BCE (for a summary, see Trautmann, 2015: 7274). Several
inscriptions describe pharaohs Thutmose I (Reign, 14931481 BCE) and
Thutmose III (Reign, 14791425 BCE) hunting hundreds of elephants at
Niya, on the Orontes River. Large tusks and a young elephant coming as
a tribute from Syria are also represented at Thebes in the tomb of Re-
khmire, a vizier to Thutmose III. Royal hunts and propagandistic dis-
play of elephants in Syria are described also in the records of Assyrian
kings, from Tiglath-pileser I (11141076 BCE) to Shalmaneser III
(859824 BCE). No mention of live elephants in Syria is later known
until Strabo described the 500 war elephants obtained by Seleucus I
Nicator from Emperor Chandragupta Maurya at the end of fourth cen-
tury BCE (Strabo trans. 2016: Geography, XVI.2.10).
The evidence described in these textual and iconographic sources
seems likely conrmed by the discovery of a consistent number of
worked and unworked elephant bones and teeth, both incisors and
molars belonging to Elephas maximus, in the Late Bronze Age and Early
Iron Age levels of several sites in northwestern Syria, as well as in a few
swamps and lakes (Pflzner, 2013, 2016; akirlar and Ikram, 2016).
Unfortunately, the faunistic data currently available for Southwestern
Asia present a substantial gap between the extinction of the Late
Pleistocene species Elephas hysudricus, the likely ancestor of Elephas
maximus, and the earliest discoveries of the so-called Syrian elephant
5
The most updated chronologies developed for both the Oxus and the Indus
Civilizations make little or no use of the major chronological stages customarily used in
the archaeology of the Middle East Early, Middle and Late Bronze Ages in favor of a
dierent subdivision of the local periodization in Eras and Phases (Kenoyer, 2004; Vidale,
2017: 810). Since the traditional labeling used for the Middle East can be misleading if
applied to the other regions here considered, absolute dating is always provided to specify
the chronological markers.

6
D. Frenez
dated to ca. 1700 BCE (Lister et al., 2013; akirlar and Ikram, 2016:
173). It is therefore impossible to understand, relying on the sole bones
and teeth remains, whether the Syrian elephant was a relict population
endemic of Southwestern Asia or it was introduced during the Middle
Bronze Age as an import from South Asia (for the endemic hypothesis,
see Miller, 1986; Becker, 2005; Pflzner, 2013, 2016 for the import of
live animals from the Indus Valley, see Collon, 1977; Caubet and
Poplin, 2010; Vila, 2010; Caubet, 2013, 2016; akirlar and Ikram,
2016). This lack of data aects also the possibility of dening whether
elephants were present in northern Syria already during the late Early
and early Middle Bronze Ages and, ultimately, whether this region can
be considered a possible source of ivory for the Oxus Civilization site.
As argued by T.R. Trautmann (2015: 68), Elephants have attracted
kings [] from the beginning of kingship. Where kings had access to
elephants locally the attraction was magnetic. In proto-dynastic Egypt,
before their limitation to the sub-Saharan region, African elephants
were buried in dedicated graves, represented on cosmetic palettes,
painted ceramics and rock carvings (Trautmann, 2015: 7071). In the
Indus Valley, elephants were carved on a stamp seal since the Early
Harappan phase, ca. 28002600 BCE, and for entire the duration of the
Indus Civilization (Kenoyer, 2001: g. 3.8; Joshi and Parpola, 1987: M-
278 to M-286, H-89 to H-91, L-161 to L-172; Shah and Parpola, 1991:
M-1141 to M-1162, M-1482 to M-1488, H-590 and H-591; Parpola
et al., 2010: M-1912 to 1915). Moreover, the frequent representations
on Indus stamp seals of elephants wearing a harness or a blanket-like
covering while standing in front of a manger-like object, and the dis-
covery of painted terracotta gurines of elephants may possibly in-
dicate an incipient stage of taming of this animal (Kenoyer, 1998: 86,
166 and g. 8.44; Clark, 2016: Appendix B; Trautmann, 2015: 9195).
Moreover, in both Egypt and the Indus Valley there was a limited but
constant production of elephant ivory objects from the Chalcolithic
throughout the Bronze Age (Krzyszkowska and Morkot, 2000; Meadow,
1998; Morello, 2014).
On the contrary, there are no representations of such a majestic and
awe-inspiring animal in the Near East, Central Asia and the Iranian
Plateau until much later periods, with the exception of a few icono-
graphies evidently inuenced by contacts with the Indus Valley
(Moorey, 1994: 119; Collon, 1996: 213, g. 8c; Sarianidi, 2005: 258,
g. 114; Trautmann, 2015: 7982 and g. 2.6; akirlar and Ikram,
2016: 169). Moreover, it is ascertained that during the Early and Middle
Bronze Age the production of ivory objects in northern Syria and
Cappadocia relied almost exclusively on hippopotamus ivory, while the
limited manufacturing of elephant ivory in Mesopotamia depended on
the supply of elephant tusks from the Indus Valley via the Gulf (Caubet
and Poplin, 1987; Moorey, 1994: 115116; Caubet, 2013, 2016).
Cuneiform texts represent another interesting source of information
for attempting to understand the most likely provenance of the ivory
used to manufacture the objects found at Gonur Depe. In The Curse of
Agade, a lamentation broadly dated to the Ur III Period in the rst
quarter of the second millennium BCE, the mighty elephant was
mentioned in between monkeys and the water bualo, two species
endemic of the Indus Valley that were explicitly mentioned among the
most exotic animals (Cooper, 1983: 5051, line 21). According to R.M.
Boehmer (1975: 11), Syrian elephant would not have been exotic en-
ough to be mentioned in this specic context (see also Cooper, 1983:
237).
A number of cuneiform texts from Ebla, about 50 km southwest of
Aleppo in northwestern Syria, mention elephant tusks and elephant
ivory objects received as royal gifts from the polity of Dugurasu in the
twenty years before Eblas destruction (Archi, 2016).6 Considering the
allowance paid to the Eblaite envoys (Archi, 2016: 1516), Dugurasu
6
The historical causes and exact dating of the rst destruction of Ebla between 2400
and 2300 BCE, during which Palace G and its royal archives were burned down, are still a
matter of debate. For a comprehensive review of the dierent theories, see Biga, 2014:
102-103.
Archaeological Research in Asia xxx (xxxx) xxxxxx
was denitely a remote place beyond the usual commercial circuits of
Ebla. The identication of Dugurasu is still disputed between its in-
terpretation as the Eblaite transliteration of an Egyptian word for the
Nile Delta and its association on phonetic bases with the eastern polity
of Tukrish, which is mentioned in the cuneiform sources of Mesopo-
tamia during the rst half of the second millennium BCE (Biga, 2014;
Roccati, 2015; Archi, 2016: 14).7 Nevertheless, in either cases, during
the last centuries of the third millennium BCE elephant ivory arrived in
Syria from a distant and exotic land and it was clearly not available
locally.
All considered, without entering in much detail into the thorny
question of whether the alleged Syrian elephant was endemic or a later
introduction from South Asia, it seems quite clear that elephant ivory
might have reached the Oxus Civilization sites only from the Indus
Valley, where the exploitation of Elephas maximus and its ivory dates
back to the aceramic Neolithic, ca. 70005500 BCE, and became
widespread during the Bronze Age.
6. Artifacts in ivory of Asian elephant from Gonur Depe
The artifacts made from Asian elephant ivory found at Gonur Depe
mainly belong to the spheres of personal care and gaming or divination,
but there are also a few miscellaneous objects of still unknown use that
might have been part of furniture or used as ritual and/or cultic para-
phernalia.8 They have been discovered almost exclusively in elite fu-
nerary contexts as part of auent grave goods and, in one case only,
also in a room of the so-called Royal Sanctuary complex (Fig. 3).
Table 1 summarizes their discovery contexts and itemizes the other
associated nds. Unfortunately, most of the elite graves have been
plundered in antiquity and a precise reconstruction of their content is
almost impossible. However, it appears evident that the objects carved
from Asian elephant tusks were regarded as distinctive symbols of the
higher social and economic status.
6.1. Objects for personal care and embellishment
Sarianidi found two ivory combs, one each in Grave 2228, located in
the main necropolis, and in Grave 2900, in the Western microcomplex
of the Royal Sanctuary at Gonur North. The comb from Grave 2228 (ca.
11.00 10.50 cm) is undecorated and has a crescent-shaped handle
(Sarianidi, 2007: 122 and g. 239) (Fig. 4/1). The comb from Grave
2900 (ca. 12.00 8.50 cm) also had a crescent-shaped handle, likely
attened after its breaking, but decorated on both sides with a series of
7
Texts from Ebla report that delegations from Dugurasu reached Ebla via Dulu, a city
under Ebla's hegemony, and presented a variety of items to its king, including elephant
tusks and ivory objects, linen, copper and gold. In return, Ebla sent to Dugurasu lapis
lazuli, gold, silver, tin and clothing (for a comprehensive and detailed list of the gifts
exchanged between Ebla and Dugurasu, see Archi, 2016). Basing on the biographic in-
scription of an Egyptian ocial sent by a pharaoh of the Sixth Dynasty to some unknown
places in Asia, certainly beyond Byblos and Lebanon to acquire lapis lazuli, gold, silver
and tin, and considering the gifts exchanged between Ebla and Dugurasu according to the
previously mentioned texts, M.G. Biga and A. Roccati agreed on interpreting Dulu as
Byblos and Dugurasu as the Nile Delta (Biga, 2014; Roccati, 2015). Of a dierent opinion
is Archi (2016), who located Dulu north of Aleppo based on a standard sequence of allied
city-states frequently mentioned in the Ebla texts and on onomastics similarities between
Dulu and these cities sited north of the present Syrian-Turkish border (Archi, 2016: 24
and footnote 3). Considering that in the Ebla texts the spelling du-g-ra-suki (geographical
name) could be normalized as Tukrash (G. Marchesi, personal communication), Archi
eventually identied Dugurasu with Tukrish (Archi, 2016: 1). Interestingly, according to
P. Steinkeller (2014), Tukrish might have corresponded to at least a part of the Oxus
Civilization (see also, Vidale, 2017: 18). However, the direct correspondence between
Dugurasu and Tukrish seems archaeologically inconsistent considering that Tukrish was
famous mainly for its lapis lazuli, while the Ebla texts clearly state that Dugurasu im-
ported the blue stone. Moreover, the number of tusks received by Ebla, 51 in 16 years
(Archi, 2016: 18, pt. a), suggests that Dugurasu should have had a quite direct access to
elephants and their ivory.
8
If not specied otherwise, the term ivory refers in this paper to ivory of Asian male
elephants.
7
D. Frenez
Fig. 4. Gonur Depe: (1) Ivory comb from Grave 2228; (2) Ivory comb from Grave 2900
(photographs by D. Frenez).
Fig. 5. Ivory comb from Tell Abraq (United Arab Emirates) decorated with a oral motif
(1) similar to the one carved on the base of a stone vessel found at Gonur Depe (2)
(modied after Potts, 2000: 126; Sarianidi, 2007:112); (3) Ivory comb of Indus style
found at Ras Al-Jinz RJ-2 (Sultanate of Oman; photograph by D. Frenez).
ve dot-in-circles motifs and with one dot-in-circles at the end of each
of the wide lateral projections that protect the teeth (Sarianidi, 2007:
152 and g. 43) (Fig. 4/2). In both cases, comb teeth were created with
a metal saw, ca. 0.80 to 1.00 mm thick, the marks of which are still
clearly visible on the sides of the teeth (Fig. 4/2).
Ivory combs, often decorated with dot-in-circles motifs, have been
found at Indus sites (Marshall, 1931: 532; Mackay, 1938: pl. XCI.26,
8
Archaeological Research in Asia xxx (xxxx) xxxxxx
CXXV.24; Vats, 1940: pl. CXIX.6; Mackay, 1943: pl. XCI/4, LXXXIX.12).
They are also found in southeastern Arabia at Ras Al-Jinz RJ-2, Tell
Abraq, and Bat (Cleuziou and Tosi, 2000: pl. 32; Potts, 2000: 100105
and 126127; Dpper and Schmidt, 2013: g. 10) (Fig. 5). Similar
combs, but made from wood and often undecorated, have been found at
sites in northern Bactria and in southeastern Iran at Bampur and Shahr-i
Sokhta (Askarov, 1977: Table XXI, 1213; Stein, 1937: pl. IX, Bam.A.33;
Costantini, 1979: 111114 and gs. 2831). The discovery of combs
still in place on the head of the deceased in graves at Tell Abraq and
Shahr-i Sokhta testies to their use as headdresses (Potts, 2000: 102;
Costantini, 1979: g. 28).
Combs in ivory, but probably also in bone and wood, were excep-
tional and highly prized items in Bronze Age sites across Middle and
South Asia as is conrmed also by textual sources (Potts, 1993, cf.
Oppenheim, 1954; Spycket, 1976-1980). Their rarity and the common
use of dot-in-circles decorative motifs do not permit us to make clear
distinctions between dierent regional productions of combs, pre-
venting from the possible to reconstruction of exchange patterns.
However, two combs very similar in shape to the one from Grave
2228 at Gonur Depe found in a late third millennium BCE collective
grave at Tell Abraq, on the border of the Emirates of Sharjah and Umm
al-Qaiwain, were decorated with the oral motif of a long-stemmed
tulip identical to the one carved on a stone ask from Bactria and on a
stone vessel from Gonur Depe (Potts, 1993, 1994, 2000: 126127; for
the iconographic comparanda, see Pottier, 1984: pl. XX; Sarianidi,
2002a: g. 81a; Sarianidi, 2007: 112 and g. 198). These discoveries
from Tell Abraq testify to the local production and/or reworking of
ivory combs at Oxus Civilization sites, including possibly also Gonur
Depe.
A large spatula ca. 30 cm long found in Grave 3245 at Gonur Depe,
possibly used for cosmetics or for mixing liquids, ointments or powders,
was manufactured following local shapes and art styles (Sarianidi,
2005: 248 and g. 104) (Fig. 6/1). Its 15 cm long handle was in fact
fashioned and nely decorated in bas-relief on both sides to reproduce a
chimeric winged creature, with a snake head and lion body, devouring
a cow. This motif has strong parallels in the polychrome mosaics that
decorated several graves of the Gonur necropolis (Fig. 6/3) (Sarianidi,
2005: 248 and g. 86; Sarianidi, 2008: g. 125). An undecorated spa-
tula, also from Grave 3245, was probably also produced locally
(Sarianidi, 2010: 110111 and related colour plate) (Fig. 6/2).9
A small ivory spoon found in Grave 2900 of the Royal Necropolis at
Gonur North has the end of its handle carved in the characteristic local
shape of a st (Sarianidi, 2007: 152 and g. 35; for st-like decorated
objects in stone and bone, see Sarianidi, 2007: g. 223224, 233,
236237). It might have also belonged to the sphere of personal care
and was possibly used for dosing cosmetic powders or medicines.
6.2. Objects for gaming and/or divination
At Indus sites and at Gonur Depe, a signicant number of artifacts
made from ivory are connected with practices of gaming and/or ritual
divination. The distinction between gaming for amusement and ritual
divination to predict the future or discriminate between dierent pos-
sibilities is archaeologically very elusive. In fact, such practices dier
for the nature of the agents that are considered to aect the results,
chance for gaming and the intervention of sentient supernatural or di-
vine entities for divination. In both cases, the set of objects employed to
perform games or rituals may be very similar (Gadd, 1946; Reith, 1999:
1417 and 4353; Becker, 2007: 1214; Finkel, 2007a: 2526;
Holbraad, 2010).
In Grave 2900 at Gonur Depe, Sarianidi found what he originally
9
There is mention of a further ivory cosmetic spade found in Grave 3220 (Sarianidi,
2005: 251), but it was not among the objects presented to the author for documentation
nor it was illustrated in any of the several publications about Gonur Depe.
D. Frenez
interpreted as a rectangular wooden lid decorated with of hundreds of
tiny ivory segments, triangles, drops and circles (Fig. 7/1). As dis-
covered (Sarianidi, 2007: 152 and gs. 32, 33), the inlays still had their
original arrangement and there is no doubt that they were instead part
of a gaming board for the so-called game of twenty squares, similar to
the ones found in the Royal Cemetery of Ur and at Shahr-i Sokhta
(Becker, 2007; Finkel, 2007a; Piperno and Salvatori, 2007: 287295
and g. 668) (Fig. 7/45). Direct examination of these inlays revealed
that a few of them retain portions of dot-in-circles visible on the
backside (Fig. 7/2). Evidently, they were cut out from larger decorated
objects and probably testify to the continuous reworking of ivory ob-
jects in order to maximize the exploitation of such a precious material.
A similar gaming board, decorated with ivory segments and with two
plaquettes carved in the form of a squatting bull, was found in Grave
3210 (Sarianidi, 2008: 203204 and gs. 101, 102) (Fig. 7/3). Two
more comparable gaming boards in ivory are reported respectively
from Graves 3130 and 3310 of the Southwestern burial ground at
Gonur North (Sarianidi, 2008: 204). This type of gaming board is not
very common at Indus sites, where only ve broken boards of lower
quality have been found so far, one each in terracotta at Lothal and
Mohenjo-Daro and three in limestone at Dholavira (Rao, 1985: pl. C-
CXIX.1; Mackay, 1938: pl. CXLII.82; Bisht, 2015: gs. 8.308311)
(Fig. 7/6).10
According to the available archaeological and textual sources, dif-
ferent types of dice were used with these gaming boards for playing the
10
One of the four fragments of gaming boards found at Dholavira was not used for the
game of twenty squares (Bisht, 2015: 594 and g. 8.310 in the upper-left corner), but has
anities to a squarish terracotta gameboard found at Lothal (Rao, 1985: 510 and g.
104.4)
9
Archaeological Research in Asia xxx (xxxx) xxxxxx
Fig. 6. Gonur Depe: (1) Cosmetic ivory spatula from Grave
3245 featuring a winged chimaera with snake head and lion
body devouring a cow; (2) Undecorated cosmetic ivory
spatula also from Grave 3245; (3) Polychrome mosaics
decorating Grave 3210 (photographs of the ivory objects by
D. Frenez; polychrome mosaics from Sarianidi, 2008: gs.
122 and 125).
game of twenty squares, including sheep or ox knucklebones and tet-
rahedrons or four-sided stick-dice made of various materials
(Mackenzie and Finkel, 2004: 3742; Finkel, 2007a).
A standardized type of four-sided stick-dice in ivory, measuring ca.
10 to 12 cm in length with a quadrangular section of ca. 1.20 to
1.60 cm, has been found at Gonur Depe (Fig. 8). Three complete ivory
stick-dice come from Room 115 of the Royal Sanctuary at Gonur North
(Sarianidi, 2005: 121 and g. 29) (Fig. 8/12). At least four more dice
of the same type have been found, entire and in broken pieces, asso-
ciated with other ivory objects in Graves 3155 and 3220 also at Gonur
North (Sarianidi, 2005: g. 65; Sarianidi, 2008: g. 107) (Fig. 8/34).
Poorly preserved fragments of other ivory stick-dice have also been
found in Graves 575 and 1898 of the main necropolis of Gonur Depe
(Sarianidi, 2007: 122). Visual analyses of the sections of these broken
fragments have conrmed that they are made from elephant ivory. In
section, the Schreger lines form in fact an average angle >115 degrees,
which is the case for extant proboscidea including Elephas maximus
(Espinoza and Mann, 1992) (Fig. 8, lower register; see also footnote 4
herein).
Three complete ivory stick-dice of the same type have also been
discovered at Altyn Depe in levels dating to the late stages of Namazga
V, ca. 22002000 BCE. One was discovered in Burial 252 (Masson and
Berezkin, 2005: 388 and g. 21.57 and pl. 56.5), and the other two
were part of the so-called Ganyalin Hoard (Masson and Sarianidi, 1972:
g. 29.a; Kaniuth, 2010: 6 and g. 3) (Fig. 9, upper-left).
The stick-dice from Gonur Depe and Altyn Depe have all the same
pattern of motifs. Each of three sides has dot-in-circles in increments
from one to three, while the fourth side has alternating series of
transverse lines and saltire crosses or diagonal lines forming ve or,
more often, seven subdivisions. A similar semantic sequence, but with
D. Frenez
Fig. 7. Gonur Depe: (1) Gaming board from Grave 2900 decorated with geometric ivory inlays; (2) close-up of reworked inlays; (3) Gaming board from Grave 3210 decorated with
geometric ivory inlays and bull-shaped ivory plaquettes (photographs of the reworked inlays by D. Frenez; gaming boards during excavation from Sarianidi, 2007: gs. 3233; Sarianidi,
2008: gs. 101102). Comparable gaming boards from (4) the Royal Cemetery of Ur in Mesopotamia, (5) Shahr-i Sokhta in Iran, (6) the Indus Civilization site of Dholavira in India (for
Ur, courtesy The British Museum; for Shahr-i Sokhta, courtesy S.M.S. Sajjadi; for Dholavira, courtesy The Archaeological Survey of India).
longitudinal parallel lines or, more rarely, transverse crescents on the
fourth side, occurs only on a few sticks found at Indus sites (see, e.g.,
Marshall, 1931: pl. CXXXVIII 41, 43, 48; pl. CXLIII, 43, 47, 49, 51;
Mackay, 1938: pl. LX 12, 16; Vats, 1940: Pl. CXIX 35) (Fig. 9, lower
register). On the other hand, at Indus sites there is a greater variety of
rectangular and shaped sticks, bars, and rods in ivory, all variously
decorated and sometime inscribed. These were possibly used as gaming
dice, either alone or associated with boards and gaming pieces, or as
fortune telling sticks (for a general typology, see Mackay, 1931:
562566 and the related plates) (Fig. 9, lower register).
According to I.L. Finkel (2007a: 17), stick-dice with incremental
dot-in-circles have been found in Mesopotamia only at Ur and they have
to be considered of external provenance. At Shahr-i Sokhta, in south-
eastern Iranian, stone stick-dice with dot-in-circles and crosses were
found in both the settlement area and, together with a gaming board
and gaming pieces, in Grave 731 that is dated to Period III, phase 4
(Tosi, 1983: 174 and g. 11; Piperno and Salvatori, 2007: g. 692;
Cortesi et al., 2008: g. 20) (Fig. 9, upper-right). The precise absolute
chronology of this phase at Shahr-i Sokhta is still a matter of debate.
The Italian team that excavated the site dates it between ca. 2500 and
2400 BCE based on a series of calibrated radiocarbon dates (Salvatori
and Tosi, 2001; Cortesi et al., 2008), while the French team operating in
Baluchistan dates it between ca. 2800 and 2600 BCE relying on ceramic
comparisons (Jarrige et al., 2011). In either case, these prototypes of
stick-dice seem to have been introduced earlier in southeastern Iran and
only later in Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley, where cubical dice
were also present in signicant numbers (Dales, 1968). An additional
consideration is that, in the Indus Valley, gaming boards for the game of
twenty squares were used along with other types of boards very similar
to the ones still used in the South Asia for the Alquerque and Nine Men's
Morris strategy games, known locally as Quirkat and Sujjua (Kenoyer,
1988: g. 6.39; Bell, 1979: 4748, 9195). The present evidence does
not permit to understand whether the Oxus Civilization sites acted as a
10
Archaeological Research in Asia xxx (xxxx) xxxxxx
bridge over which the use of stick-dice spread across Middle Asia, but
most likely they absorbed inuences from dierent directions, typolo-
gically and for the raw materials employed.
Gaming boards and stick-dice are often found associated with var-
ious types of gaming pieces (Finkel, 2007a). In particular, the two stick-
dice found in the Ganyalin Hoard at Altyn Depe were buried together
with twelve decorated ivory plaquettes, ten square and two round
(Kaniuth, 2010: g. 3) (Fig. 9, upper-left). Ivory plaquettes, one octa-
gonal and one square, have also been found at Dzharkutan in contexts
dating to the end of the third/beginning of the second millennium BCE
(Kaniuth, 2010: 7 and g. 4).
Identical square, round and octagonal ivory plaquettes have been
discovered in several graves at Gonur Depe, including at least Graves
3155, 3220 and probably also Grave 2900 at Gonur North (Sarianidi,
2002a: 153; Sarianidi, 2005: g. 65; Sarianidi, 2008: g. 107) (Fig. 10).
They have an average size ranging between ca. 3 and 4 cm and are
variously decorated with oblique lines at their corners and central large
concentric circles, with dot-in-circles motifs along the perimeter or
completely covering their surface, or with orthogonal grid patterns
sometimes lled with dot-in-circles. Considering their size, which per-
fectly matches the squares of the gaming boards, and their frequent
association with ivory stick-dice, these plaquettes were presumably
used as gaming pieces. A few comparable gaming pieces have also been
found at Ur and Shahr-i Sokhta (Woolley, 1934: pl. 221; Cortesi et al.,
2008: g. 19), while they are quite rare at Indus sites (Marshall, 1931:
pl. CXXXIV 3) (Fig. 9, upper-right for gaming pieces from Shahr-i
Sokhta; lower-right for those from Mohenjo-Daro).
6.3. Miscellaneous objects
The collection of ivory artifacts found at Gonur Depe includes other
exceptional pieces that have no equivalents in the ivory production of
the Indus Civilization but do have strong connections to the artistic
D. Frenez
traditions of Central Asia and of Margiana in particular.
A few ivory discs, ca. 67 cm in diameter and 1 cm thick, all found
in funerary contexts including Grave 3220, have recurring motifs
shallowly carved on both sides. Two of them bear a scorpion on one
side and a schematic composition of heart-shaped pipal leaf motifs on
the other (Sarianidi, 2005: g. 92) (Fig. 11/12). These motifs recur
frequently at Gonur Depe on metal and stone seals and were also used
in the composition of polychrome mosaics (Sarianidi, 1998: cat. nos.
17881790; Sarianidi, 2002a: 279; Sarianidi, 2005: g. 91; Sarianidi,
2008: g. 137) (Fig. 11, lower-left). The heart-shaped pipal (Ficus re-
ligiosa) leaf motif almost certainly originated in the Indus Valley
(Kenoyer 1998: 105106; Simoons, 1998: 4951), but it became soon
part of the decorative tradition of Margiana. In contrast, representa-
tions of scorpions are found in the greater Indus Valley only on a bone/
ivory button seal from the Early Harappan site of Rehman Dheri, in
northern Baluchistan, in a level dated to ca. 32003000 BCE (Shah and
Parpola, 1991: 352, Rhd-1; Durrani et al., 199495: 206 and g. 1)
(Fig. 11, lower-right).
Other ivory discs of a comparable size, also from Grave 3220, have
dot-in-circles motifs drilled on both sides in concentric series and along
the edge (Sarianidi, 2008: g. 107) (Fig. 11/34). Considering their size
and the rules of the game (Finkel, 2007a), which provide for the si-
multaneous presence of more than one piece on the board, these discs
probably were not used with the standardized type of gaming boards
found at Gonur Depe that have smaller playing squares whose side
measures ca. 5 cm (cf. Fig. 7). What purpose they were used for remains
unknown, although they might have been part of ritual paraphernalia
11
Archaeological Research in Asia xxx (xxxx) xxxxxx
Fig. 8. Gonur Depe: (12) Ivory stick-dice from Room 115
of the Royal Sanctuary; (34) Ivory stick-dice from Graves
3210 and 3220 of the Royal Necropolis (photographs by D.
Frenez). On the lower register, broken fragments of stick-
dice with Schreger lines visible in section forming an angle
of 115 degrees characteristic of extant proboscidea (cour-
tesy A. Caubet).
or have been used in association with larger gaming sets made of per-
ishable materials. In fact, ethnographic studies of the pachisi game, still
widely played in South Asia, report that most gaming boards were
embroidered on cloth (Norman, 1964).
A previously unpublished broken ivory handle from an unspecied
provenience at Gonur Depe was carefully carved to form two inter-
woven snakes (Fig. 12/1). It closely resembles the handle of a metal
knife from Grave 1922 (Sarianidi, 2002a: 114; Sarianidi, 2007: 82 and
g. 75) (Fig. 12, upper-right).
The sculptural representation of a winding snake made from ivory
was found under the right shoulder of a male buried in Grave 3155 of
the Royal Necropolis at Gonur North (Sarianidi, 2005: 200 and g. 66)
(Fig. 12/2). In Bronze Age Margiana, winding snake was a very
common motif, which is found represented on ceramic containers, gold
jewelry, metal and stone seals, bronze ceremonial axes, and polychrome
mosaics (Sarianidi, 1998: g. 6; Sarianidi, 2007: 7879; Sarianidi,
2002a: 98 lower-right; Sarianidi, 2008: gs. 55, 125, 126) (Fig. 12,
lower-right).
In Grave 3235, Sarianidi (2008: 206 and g. 115) found three long
and slightly curved ivory plaques perforated at one end, ca. 20 to 25 cm
long and 4 cm high with a maximum thickness of ca. 0.80 to 1.00 cm,
whose shape apparently follows the natural curvature and diameter of
the tusk. These plaques, two of which are entire and one is broken into
several pieces, are decorated on the obverse while the reverse was
attened and left unpolished (Fig. 13/12). They were decorated with
the same pattern of ve rectangular segments separated by three
transverse lines, each of the lateral segment containing roughly carved
D. Frenez Archaeological Research in Asia xxx (xxxx) xxxxxx

Fig. 9. Stick-dice and gaming pieces in Elephant ivory from

Altyn Depe in Margiana and in stone and wood from Shahr-
i Sokhta in Iran (upper register); Stick-dice, decorated sticks
and an ivory gaming piece from the Indus Civilization site
of Mohenjo-Daro in Pakistan (for Altyn Depe, modied
after Masson and Sarianidi, 1972: g. 117; for Shahr-i
Sokhta, courtesy S.M.S. Sajjadi; for Mohenjo-Daro, mod-
ied after Mackay, 1931).

Fig. 10. Gonur Depe: (12) Decorated ivory plaquettes

probably used as gaming pieces from Grave 3155; (34)
from Grave 3220; (56) from Grave 2900 (photographs by
D. Frenez).

12
D. Frenez
saltire crosses formed by intersecting bundles of lines (ve lines in the
two segments at each extremity and three lines in the two median
segments), and a lozenge-shaped grid in the central segment. This
decorative scheme evokes that carved on fourth side of the stick-dice
found at Gonur Depe and Altyn Depe (cf. Figs. 8 and 9), but the shape of
these enigmatic objects would have prevented their use as dice or for-
tune sticks. Four identical perforated ivory plaques were found in Grave
3245, but they are decorated with a continuous motif of dot-in-circles
arranged in a zig-zag pattern, suggesting a specic use for these objects
distinct from that of dice and counters (Sarianidi, 2010: 110111 and
related colour plate) (Fig. 13/34).
The decorations of these ivory plaques, including both segmented
and zig-zag patterns, recall the motifs carved on four long animal bone
sticks found at Altyn Depe, the actual function of which has not been
clearly dened yet (Masson, 1981: pl. XIX/2/A-D; Masson and
Berezkin, 2005: 385, g. 18/3437 & pl. 46/36; Possehl, 2002: 230
and g. 12.32) (Fig. 13, lower-left). A morphological comparison with
later ivory pieces found in Room SW 37 of Fort Shalmaneser at Nimrud,
in northeastern Iraq, suggests that the ivory plaques found at Gonur
Depe in Graves 3235 and 3245 might have been possibly used to dec-
orate architectural elements and/or pieces of furniture (Herrmann,
1986: 13 and cat. nos. 684, 713, 1237) (Fig. 13, lower-right).
7. Manufacturing and trade of ivory objects found at Gonur Depe
The detailed study of the artifacts made from the ivory of Indian
elephants found at Gonur Depe has demonstrated that there is sig-
nicant functional, morphological and stylistic separation between this
collection and the contemporaneous production of ivory objects in the
greater Indus Valley. On the bases of the presently available data, and
considering the absence of isotopic analyses for both the Gonur Depe
ivory objects and the collections found at Indus sites, a complete re-
construction of the dierent stages of manufacturing and trade of these
artifacts is presently unrealistic. However, it has been possible to dene
some rm points and propose solid hypotheses about the organization
13
Archaeological Research in Asia xxx (xxxx) xxxxxx
Fig. 11. Gonur Depe: (12) Ivory discs from Grave 3220
decorated with a scorpion and heart- shaped pipal leaf
motifs; (34) Ivory discs from Grave 3220 decorated with
concentric series of dot-in-circles (photographs by D.
Frenez); on the lower register, iconographic comparanda of
the same motifs from Gonur Depe and the Early Harappan
site of Rehman Dheri in northern Baluchistan (modied
after Sarianidi, 2002a, 2005, 2007; Shah and Parpola,
1991: pl. 32).
and signicance of this important and still scarcely understood craft
production.
The ultimate question that touches on all aspects of this research
concerns the provenance and identity of the craftsmen who contributed
to the manufacture of these objects. Who had the skills to transform an
exotic and precious raw material that originated in the Indus Valley to
produce artifacts following the local taste of Central Asian elites? Local
craftsmen likely skilled in woodworking who transformed elephant
tusks and ivory pieces that had been traded to Central Asia? Or spe-
cialized Indus ivory carvers that moved to Central Asia and worked as
resident or itinerant craftsmen? A detailed analysis of the expertise and
technical skills necessary to properly cut an Asian elephant tusks and
transform it into a nished ivory object of a complexity comparable to
the one of the ivories found at Gonur Depe might help answering this
question.
7.1. Manufacturing stages of elephant ivory objects
The carving of elephant ivory reached an incredible level of artistic
sophistication and technical complexity during dierent historical
periods and in diverse regions across the world (for an overview of the
dierent ivory productions, see Cutler, 1985; Caubet and Gaborit-
Chopin, 2004; Campbell Pedersen, 2015). Even if the ivory items
manufactured in Middle and South Asia during the Bronze Age were
still rather simple objects, their production already required a specic
expertise and technical skills. With the advent of metal tools, the car-
ving process of ivory has not changed signicantly over the millennia
(Campbell Pedersen, 2015: 140). A comprehensive reconstruction of
the technical actions performed traditionally to produce an object from
elephant ivory is proposed here, summarizing and detailing the steps
described by M. Campbell Pedersen (2015: 140150):
(i) Before any work was done, a sketch of the nished item was
made; in some workshops it was also customary to make a model in clay
or wax; (ii) Having chosen a seasoned tusk, any enamel remaining was
usually removed by abrasion; sometimes it was removed by []
D. Frenez
heating it and aking it o with a chisel; (iii) The appropriate size for
the design was calculated and cut from the tusk using a saw; it was
important to work out exactly how to cut the ivory so as to make the
best use of the precious material and to waste as little as possible; (iv)
The design was drawn on the surface of the piece, which was then
roughly shaped using saws and chisels; (v) It was customary to moisten
the surface of the ivory to make it a little softer and less brittle; (vi)
Various chisels, gouges, les and burins were used for carving, []
ner tools were used for ne work, eventually down to a sharp needle if
necessary; (vii) The objects were polished using a variety of abrasive
materials, including leather, seal and shark skin, rough sh scales and
chalk to give the nal shine; (viii) Polished ivory artifacts could be
eventually incised and/or etched with thin lines to create designs or
emphasize specic features; (ix) Finished objects in ivory could be
bleached using a mixture of urine and lime; (x) In special cases, the
creamy colour of ivory could be altered by heating, smoking, or staining
with liquids, or by applying pigments; (xi) The objects were dampened
in water to provide them with their original moisture content that
might have been lost or altered and then greased to maintain it.
Not all these manufacturing stages and technical actions were
adopted in the production of the ivory objects found at Gonur Depe.
Even though the presence of traces of dark substances within the motifs
that were drilled and incised on a few dice and plaquettes might suggest
14
Archaeological Research in Asia xxx (xxxx) xxxxxx
Fig. 12. Gonur Depe: (1) Large fragment of an ivory handle
shaped in form of interwoven snakes and comparable
bronze knife; (2) Sculptural representation of a winding
snake made from ivory from Grave 3155 and similar ico-
nography traced on a pottery sherd from Gonur Depe
(photographs of the ivory objects by D. Frenez; comparanda
from Sarianidi, 2002a: 98, 114).
that they were originally lled with pigments (for the coloring of an-
cient ivory objects, see Aanni, 2012), there is no evidence for
bleaching, and the general quality of the carving did not require the
skills and ner tools used during later historical and modern periods for
manufacturing pieces in-the-round or with an accentuated under-
cutting. Even so, their production still required an elevated level of
technical virtuosity and close acquaintance with the raw material and
with its preparation for the carving.
Based on historical and ethnographic evidence, the manufacture of
elephant ivory required specic skills already for cutting the tusks, in
order to maximize the size of the ivory roughouts and to obtain parti-
cular shapes and surface conditions (Kunz, 1916: 241251; Burns,
1976: 245248; Cutler, 1985: 119; von Bargen, 1994: 51 and g. 35;
Caubet and Gaborit-Chopin, 2004: 1617 and g. 2; Bianchi, 2007:
358360) (Fig. 14). These operations do not include only the actual
cutting of the tusk, but also the careful removal of the hard enamel
layers and of the cementum in order to facilitate the carving of the
actual ivory and to prevent cracking and distortions of the nished
objects due to the dierent hardness and elasticity of the diverse
components of the tusk. In addition, the ivory near the pulp cavity,
which is too soft and fragile to be successfully carved, needed to be
removed as well. Moreover, the relative orientation of the accentuated
cone-in-cone pattern of elephant ivory had to be preventively
D. Frenez
considered in view of the nal shape of the object to be carved. This
evaluation was necessary to minimize the waste, facilitate the carving,
increase the structural resistance of the objects, and obtain the desired
nishing of the dierent surfaces in a tridimensional piece (Cutler,
1985: 3742; Bianchi, 2007: 358360; Campbell Pedersen, 2015:
137140).
The reconstruction of their original position into a hypothetical tusk
was possible for several of the ivory artifacts found at Gonur Depe
basing on the relative orientation of the cone-in-cone pattern visible on
their dierent surfaces and on the curvature of the piece. This analysis
has proven that the secondary cutting of the tusks, or of large sections
of tusks, into smaller pieces was executed having already in mind the
size and nal shape of the objects to be eventually produced.11 This last
evidence suggests that these fundamental stages of the manufacturing
process were executed, after the customers had already commissioned
the items to produce or after a thorough study of the local market and
artistic trends, by skilled ivory carvers with a deep understanding of the
physiology and physical proprieties of the dierent parts and compo-
nents of an elephant tusk.
Determining the nature of the nal stages of carving is much more
problematic and hypothetical. According to dierent texts about crafts and
arts in South Asia during the British Raj (Kunz, 1916: 250252; Burns,
1976; Pal, 1978: 204206), the carving of elephant ivory objects of a
complexity comparable to the one of the artifacts discovered at Gonur
Depe might have required using traditional techniques and tools to
soak the objects into water at a specic temperature, followed by slow
11
This conclusion is based on the protocol established in a seminal work by Caubet
and Poplin (1987) about the technological and technical aspects involved in the pro-
duction of the ivories found at Ugarit, which was developed further by G. Aanni in his
detailed study of the ivories from Arslan Tash (Aanni, 2011, 2012, 2015).
15
Archaeological Research in Asia xxx (xxxx) xxxxxx
Fig. 13. Gonur Depe: (12) Long perforated ivory plaques
from Grave 3235 decorated with crosses and transverse
lines; (34) Long perforated ivory plaques from Grave 3245
decorated with zig-zag patterns of dot-in-circles (photo-
graphs by D. Frenez); (lower register) Decorated bone sticks
from Altyn Depe in Turkmenistan and ivory panels used to
decorate furniture from Nimrud in Iraq (modied after
(Masson, 1981: pl. XIX/2/A-D; Herrmann, 1986: 684, 713,
1237).
drying and possibly also oil baths during several of the dierent manu-
facturing stages. This process would have then facilitated the carving, but
mainly prevented warping, debering and cracking of the ivory objects
and would have eventually ensured their optimal conservation.
Several scholars have proposed a substantial technical correspondence
between the carving of ivory, bone and some hard woods (Barnett, 1982:
gs. 4b-c; Cutler, 1987: 443-445; Evely, 1992; Krzyszkowska and Morkot,
2000: 328329; Di Paolo, 2009: 143; Feldman, 2014: 28; for a review, see
Bianchi, 2007: 351352 and footnotes 79). Unfortunately, there is almost
no factual evidence for the organization of ivory workshops and its
craftsmanship in the Bronze Age. In fact, this assumption relies mainly on
evidence from ethnographic research in South Asia (Pal, 1978: 206) or
from later historical periods, such as discoveries from at Palatine East and
the Crypta Balbi in Rome for the archaeological data (St. Clair, 1996,
2003; Arena et al., 2001), Pausanias and Pliny for the classical sources,
Heraclius and Theophilus for the Middle Ages (for a review of textual
sources, see Bianchi, 2007: 350 and footnotes 23; for the archaeological
evidence, see Bianchi, 2007: 350351 and footnotes 46). However, even
for the Roman period, most of the data about the objects carved came from
bone working workshops and dumps, while tools were reconstrued mainly
from those used for wood carving (Bianchi, 2007: 351352). In any case,
even if the technical approach, the tools employed and the dierent stages
of production were certainly similar, the working of elephant ivory re-
quired a specic expertise and technical skills that were only partially
comparable to the ones needed for carving bones and hard woods.
In the specic case of Gonur Depe, and for Bronze Age sites in
Middle Asia and the Middle East in general, there is no evidence for
workshops where organic materials such as ivory, bone and wood were
transformed. A detailed comparison of the objects made from animal
bones and from ivory found at Gonur Depe testies to a clear technical
and economic separation between these two productions. As previously
mentioned, wooden objects morphologically and/or functionally
D. Frenez
Fig. 14. Anatomical drawing of an elephant tusk with its dierent organic components (upper left) and indication of the cuts required to obtain ivory pieces of specic sizes and shapes
from the dierent sections of an elephant tusk (modied after von Bargen, 1994: g. 3; Caubet and Gaborit-Chopin, 2004: g. 2; Campbell Pedersen 2015: g. 2.36; courtesy Silvia and
Alessandro Armando).
comparable to ivory items found at Gonur Depe have been instead
found at Shahr-i Sokhta and Bampur in southeastern Iran (Stein, 1937:
pl. IX, Bam.A.33; Costantini, 1979: 111114 and gs. 2831). They
include mainly combs with a at back and raised points stylistically
comparable to their ivory equivalents from Gonur Depe, but also
functionally similar stick-dice and a gaming board, which were made
from high-quality woods such as ash (Fraxinus), maple (Acer), Indian
rosewood (Dalbergia sissoo) and haldu (Haldina cordifolia) (Costantini,
1979). Even if morphological similarities do not imply the application
of the same manufacturing processes (Vidale, 2000: 130134; Binford,
2009: 143145), they suggest the possibility that at least some of the
ivory objects found at Gonur Depe, including the two combs, might
have been produced by local wood carvers or were imported as nished
objects from the Indus Valley.
7.2. Trading strategies of elephant ivory objects
All considered, just a few of the objects made from Asian elephant
ivory found at Gonur Depe might have been produced at Indus sites by
local ivory carvers and eventually traded to sites in Margiana as nished
objects. Based on analysis of the corpus of archaeological data from Gonur
Depe, the most likely and prevalent scenario is that entire elephant tusks
or, more probably, large tusk sections were traded from the Indus Valley to
Central Asia and were carved locally into nished objects according to the
specic demand of the local elites by local craftsmen originally trained in
wood carving or by Indus-trained ivory carvers.12
16
Archaeological Research in Asia xxx (xxxx) xxxxxx
This skilled craftsmanship might have been found at sites in
Margiana with consistent demand of high quality wooden artifacts or
might have been provided by the same merchants who traded the tusks,
whether locals, Harappans or middlemen. The stable presence at sites in
Central Asia of craftsmen who carved mainly ivory is instead quite
unlikely due to the sporadic demand of working this rare raw material.
According to R. Miller (1986: 3132), the artisans who worked ivory in
northern Syria during the late second and early rst millennia BCE
would probably have worked also on other luxury materials, so the
rate at which ivory was produced and used would be dicult to predict
and may not have involved large quantities at any time. Moreover,
recent research by M. Vidale (2017: 315) on specialization, standardi-
zation and eciency in ancient craft production have stressed that even
a highly specialized manufacturing, such as the making of lapis lazuli
beads, relied on a complicated and quite exible production network
involving the processing of diverse raw materials using dierent tech-
niques, rather than a segregated operational sequence. Unfortunately,
the absence in the present archaeological record of ivory workshops
prevents from reaching a comparable level of description and under-
standing, but the overall organization of elephant ivory manufacturing,
from the procurement of the tusks to the nal carving, might have been
even more complex than that of semiprecious stones.
An alternative and intriguing hypothesis is instead supported by
signicant archaeological and textual data from comparable socio-
economic or geographical contexts, which suggest that the likely high
D. Frenez
commercial and ideological value of ivory and of the expertise required
to carve it made also possible and economically protable the presence
in Central Asia of independent itinerant ivory carvers native to or
trained in the Indus Valley. These itinerant artisans might have pro-
vided at the same time both the raw material and the unique skills to
transform it into nished objects. Ethnographic research shows that
long-distance traders and traveling skilled artisans were interested
mainly in foreign markets polities and both activities were often un-
dertaken by the same individuals (Helms, 1993: 4041).13
The presence of itinerant ivory carvers who moved between the
northwestern regions of the Subcontinent and Central Asia has already
been suggested for production of the stylistically heterogeneous group
of Indianesque ivories found at Begram and Tillya Tepe in northeastern
Afghanistan, Dalverzin Tepe in southern Uzbekistan, and Taxila in
northern Pakistan (Mehendale, 1996, 2002). Moreover, the existence of
itinerant ivory workers in ancient South Asia is also described in a few
literary sources. The Guttila Jtaka mentions a group of ivory carvers
who traveled from Benares to Ujjain to oer their products and skills to
the local elites (Pal, 1978: 46), while a Buddhist Sanskrit Vinaya tells
the story of an Indian master ivory carver who traveled up to the land
of the Yavanas, most likely the Hellenistic Bactria, to put his superior
expertise at the service of a renown local artist (Dwivedi, 1976: 19).
The historical and socioeconomic circumstances that led to the
likely carving of elephant ivory at Central Asian sites during the Bronze
Age can be fruitfully compared also with the earliest phases of ivory
production at Etruscan sites in the west of Central Italy during the
eighth and seventh centuries BCE. As in Central Asia, no ivory, except
for the tusks of wild boars, was in fact available locally in this region
and ivory objects were therefore regarded as a highly valuable and
exotic production (for an overview of ivory objects and ivory manu-
facturing in Etruria, see Huls, 1957; Martelli, 2008: 124125; Naso,
2012: 434435). After a short period of direct import of nished ivory
objects at the end of the eighth and the beginning of the seventh
12
The complete absence of entire elephant tusks and tusk sections at sites in Central
Asia, with the exception of the already mentioned one found at Gonur Depe, is not sur-
prising considering the value of this exotic and rare material, which is also proven by the
evidence for reworking noted in the Gonur Depe collection.
13
The concept of skilled itinerant craftsmen became popular after V.G. Childe applied
it to explain the introduction and transmission of metalworking technology in Europe
(Childe, 1930: 411; Childe, 1939: 113117; Childe, 1958: 172173). This model is now
outdated and it is no longer used to describe the long process of gradual transition from
stone to copper working between the Carpathian Basin and the Aegean, which has instead
derived from the autochthonous development of regional orescences (Sherratt, 1976;
Evans, 1978). The circulation of elephant ivory objects among the Middle Asian elites as
indicators of the highest social status have some basic similarities with the conditions at
the base of Childe's model of itinerant metalsmiths in prehistoric Europe. However, the
two phenomena also dier substantially. Both productions relied on a skilled know-how,
which might have been hardly developed and/or replicated without a relatively long
period of apprenticeship. This assumption is true mainly for metalworking, but ivory
carving was also a complex craft activity and needed specic skills and expertise. Childe
(1939: 113; 1944: 6162) motivated the alleged rapid diusion of metallurgy in Europe
with the material need of the dierent chiefdoms to remain competitive in warfare
technologies by casting bronze into new types of weapons. This assumption is now re-
garded as the strongest point against Childe's model (Gibson, 1996: 107108). The free
and transversal circulation among dierent belligerent groups of itinerant metalsmiths
producing new lethal weapons is considered in fact contrary to any logic during a period
of intense warfare. However, this logic argumentation against Childe's model cannot by
equally applied to the circulation of skilled craftsmen that manufactured a small amount
of prized ornaments and other leisure products used by the elites as symbols of social
status. Conversely, the regional diusion of these rare objects through itinerant ivory
carvers might have been instead promoted by the elites in order to have their economic
and symbolic values clearly recognized and praised by their equals, leading to the
eventual creation of a new shared symbol of the higher social status. A similar ideologic
phenomenon was probably at the base of the diusion from Egypt to the Indus Valley of
diverse board games, such as the so-called game of twenty squares (Mackenzie and Finkel,
2004; Finkel, 2007a,b; de Voogt et al., 2013; Crist et al., 2016). Technical reasons were
instead at the base of the presence of Indus-trained bead makers in southern Mesopotamia
to produce ornaments following the local vogue, but using carnelian and apposite stone
drills imported from the greater Indus Valley (Kenoyer, 1998: 9798, g. 5.27; 2008).
Similarly, Indus potters were likely active in the interior of the Oman Peninsula to pro-
duce Indus pottery types using local wares (Frenez et al., 2016; Mry et al., 2017).
17
Archaeological Research in Asia xxx (xxxx) xxxxxx
century BCE, ivories started to be manufactured locally by immigrants
from the Levant who eventually established a local tradition of ivory
craftsmanship in Etruria (Rathje, 1979: 165167; Martelli, 2008: 125;
Camporeale, 2013: 888; Sannibale, 2014: 316).14
The objects of Asian elephant ivory found at Gonur Depe provide
evidence for a highly specialized trade that probably relied on the ex-
traordinary economic and social value of both the raw material and the
nished objects, which constituted among the most prized productions
of the time, as well as on the technical and conceptual signicance of
the transformation process. According to M.W. Helms (1993: 1315),
skilled crafting, distinguished from the everyday domestic or ordinary
productions, is usually reserved for, controlled by, or associated with
persons of inuence, and required high technical skills, a considerable
knowledge of the symbolism expressed by design and style, and diers
in several important respects from crafts associated with more mundane
spheres of life; skilled crafting is political and ideological rather than
economic in nature. The intrinsic value of elephant ivory objects,
mainly when exhibited in a region when elephant was not endemic, was
probably even higher than its presumed extraordinary economic value
and might have therefore led to the creation of specic socioeconomic
structures for its manufacturing and trade, comparable to those adopted
in the same period for the distribution across the region of other skilled
productions (Kenoyer, 2008; Frenez et al., 2016; Mutin et al., 2016;
Mry et al., 2017).
8. Conclusions
The detailed study of the substantial collection of artifacts made
from the ivory of Asian elephants (Elephas maximus Linnaeus, 1758)
discovered at the Oxus Civilization site of Gonur Depe, in southern
Turkmenistan, demonstrates that most of these objects were probably
manufactured in Central Asia according to the local artistic tradition
and did not arrive as nished items from sites in the Indus Valley. In
fact, almost all ivories excavated at Gonur Depe show a marked degree
of functional and stylistic separation from the contemporaneous pro-
ductions of ivory objects in the Indus Civilization.
A few ivory objects may have occasionally arrived in Central Asia
from the greater Indus Valley as nished items. However, considering
the sources of elephant ivory available for Gonur Depe, the discovery on
site of the large unworked section of an elephant tusk, and the evidence
for reworking of ivory objects at Gonur Depe and possibly also at other
sites in the Oxus basin, it seems more likely that tusks of male Asian
elephants were traded to Central Asia, whole or in large sections, by
merchants who might have provided also the skilled craftsmanship
necessary to transform them into nished objects. The highly specia-
lized skills and expertise required to carve ivory objects comparable to
the ones found at Gonur Depe suggest that they were manufactured by
local wood carvers or most likely by Indus-trained ivory carvers.
Information obtained from comparable sociotechnical and ethno-
graphic contexts and from later textual sources about the manu-
facturing and trade of elephant ivory in South Asia allow considering
also the possible presence in Central Asia of Indus-trained itinerant
ivory carvers. In fact, the high economic and ideological value that
ivory objects acquired during the Bronze Age when exhibited outside
the Indus Valley may have led to the establishment of specic socio-
economic and technical networks for the manufacturing and trade of
14
The presence of specialized foreign artisans in Etruria is acknowledged in later
historical sources by Strabo and Pliny and is attested archaeologically from their sig-
natures on objects evidently produced locally and from the discovery of graves with
features and decorations extraneous to the local tradition (Camporeale, 2013: 886890).
Moreover, the frequent combination of non-local motifs and shapes with the use of local
materials testies also to the installation in the major centers of southern Etruria of
workshops specialized in dierent craft activities that employed skilled artisans coming
from Central Europe, Magna Graecia and the Near East (e.g., see Bellelli, 2004;
Camporeale, 2013: 886; Isler, 1983; Martelli, 2008; Ridgway, 2010; Szilgyi, 1972;
Torelli, 1976, 2000).
D. Frenez
these prized objects across Middle Asia.
Acknowledgements
This research would have not been possible without the permission
granted by the late Dr. Viktor Sarianidi and Dr. Nadezhda Dubova and
without the logistic support provided by the Italian Project in the
Murghab Area headed by the late Prof. Maurizio Tosi and with the eld-
direction of Dr. Barbara Cerasetti.
I wish to thank also Dr. Annie Caubet, Dpartement Antiquits
Orientales of the Muse du Louvre, and Dr. Giorgio Aanni, University
of Turin, for the precious methodological remarks and suggestions
about the technical study of ivories; Dr. Jonathan Mark Kenoyer,
Department of Anthropology of the University of Wisconsin at Madison,
for having put at my complete disposal his immense library of books
and papers about archaeological and ethnographic study of arts and
crafts; Dr. Richard H. Meadow, Director of the Zooarchaeology
Laboratory at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology,
Harvard University, for having guided me in the study of the Asian
elephant in antiquity and for the inspiring discussions about possible
future developments of this research; Dr. Gianni Marchesi, University of
Bologna, and Dr. Piotr Steinkeller, Harvard University, for the stimu-
lating discussion about elephant and ivory in the cuneiform texts.
A special thanks to Dr. Massimo Vidale, University of Padova, for
having encouraged and stimulated me to deepen further my under-
standing of the organization of craft production in the Bronze Age
urban communities; to Dr. Gian Luca Bonora for the kind and compe-
tent assistance in solving the many the chronological issues of this re-
search. Thanks to Gi Morse for having reviewed the English of my rst
draft. I wish to thank also my colleagues and friends, Dr. Eugenio
Bortolini, Dr. Simone Mantellini and Dr. Elena Maini for the continuous
dialogue and the reciprocal support and, last but not least, the Ministry
of Heritage and Culture of the Sultanate of Oman for having generously
supported dierent aspects of my research.
A sincere thanks to the anonymous reviewers who greatly con-
tributed to improve the quality of this paper.
I dedicate this paper to the memory of Prof. Victor Ivanovich
Sarianidi (19292013) and of Prof. Maurizio Tosi (19442017), who
contributed to explored that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, the lone
and level sands stretch far away. Ozymandias, Percy B. Shelley.
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