A Móra Ferenc Múzeum Évkönyve: Studia Archaeologica 8. (Szeged, 2002)
NAGY Imre: Fabulous Creatures From the Desert Sands: Central Asian Woolen Textiles from the Second Century BC to the Second Century AD.
back to 2000 BC, but the most spectaculars being those from the Han and Tang dynasties. These textile finds deserve the attention of the historians of textiles in the first place, but considering that most of them have figurai motifs, archaeologists, art historians and scholars of iconography may find interesting data on them. The name of Shanpula should be familiar for the scholars of the history of ancient Central Asia. Shanpula is a small oasis town located fourteen kilometers southwest of Luopu county town and thirty kilometers southeast of the market city of Hetian, known as Khotan in the local language. Hetian was known to the Chinese as Yutian during Han times (206 BC - AD 221), and once was a thriving oasis-state on the Southern Silk Route. During his 1913-14 expedition to the Tarim River Basin, Aurel Stein purchased two woolen fragments of slit-wool tapestry and part of a wooden bowl at Hetian, both said to have come from a cemetery at Shanpula. Stein never visited Shanpula but one tapestry fragment with a stylized floral design was illustrated in his Innermost Asia. Despite Stein mentioning Shanpula as an important source of antique finds, the small village site remained unstudied until 1982. In that year, heavy rains caused severe flooding that burst the dams of the Yulongkashi river and its canal, and the water washed out parts of the cemetery, thus exposing grave goods and human remains. In 1983, the Xinjiang Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology started a series of excavation which lasted until 1995. In May 2000, the Abegg-Stiftung (Riggisberg, Switzerland), the Museum of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, and the Xinjiang Institute of Cultural and Historical Relics and Archaeology agreed to establish a cooperative research program to explore the Shanpula textiles. One of the results of this collaboration is the present volume under review. Emma C. Bunker, the Research Consultant of the Denver Art Museum had an active part in bringing together this joint research program, and she was requested to explore the cultural and historical background of the textiles. In 1999, she had an opportunity to visit the Shanpula site and the fragments preserved in Xinjiang. In the Introduction of the 156 page, large format, heavily illustrated volume, Zhang Yuzhong, the Associate Director of the Xinjiang Institute of Cultural and Historical Relics and Archaeology, and Du Gencheng, Director of the Museum of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region describe shortly how the collaboration came to realization, and indicate the importance of the Shanpula textiles. The first chapter was written by Dominik Keller, the Director of the Abegg-Stiftung. She discusses the circumstances of the joint research program, emphasizing the role of Han Rubin, Director of the Institute of the History of Metallurgy at the University of Science and Technology in Beijing, and Emma C. Bunker. She also explains that the Abegg-Stiftung extended its range of activities from the Mediterranean and Near East, along the ancient Silk Road to explore and research the textile finds. In the second part of her short writing she describes the textile fragments of Shanpula in general terms, phrasing some observations which might influence our appreciation on these important textiles. All the pieces illustrated in the catalogue are fragments. It is no wonder, as the carbon14 test on them indicated that they were produced and/or used between the third century BC and the fourth century AD. The majority of the textiles depict animals - primarily deer, or deer-like creatures, walking in a row - but there are some really puzzling fragments too. The colors of these fragments are remarkable, especially in the light of the fact that they spent almost two thousand years in the desert sand. There are two shades of pink and pale blue, which are not found in any other textiles in Central Asia. The use of bold color scheme, and the abstract stylization of animal figures each contribute to the charm of these tapestry bands. Keller suggests that the stylized treatment of the bodies, the use of space, the variety of adornment and the free use of colors indicate that the depiction of the creatures in itself had no direct iconographical significance as we know it from the steppe cultures. Two sentences later she declares that these depictions of animals represent "an early form of free artistic expression" (12). For supporting her statement she refers to the curvilinear forms within the animals' bodies, evaluating them the following way: "...The adornments within the bodies reflect motifs from the western Eurasian steppes, but whereas there the motifs are strictly rhythmic, suggesting that they were created according to formulated meanings, in the Shanpula textiles the shapes are much more free. Within each animal we find a new variation, and this is a highly significant difference " (12). These remarks force the Shanpula textiles into a field of appreciation which is non-applicable to the art of this time period. The reader feels that what Keller calls "an early form of free artistic expression" is nothing else but a quick conclusion of a comparative analysis on superficial premises. The investigation of the published fragments reveals quite obviously that the adornments within the animal bodies show a systematic organization, even if they use that organizing principle in a much more unobstructed way than in the metalwork of the steppe zone. The difference between the metalwork of the western Eurasian steppes and the Shanpula textiles might originate - according to the opinion of the reader - from the difference in media: gold, bronze, or gilded bronze on one hand, and woven textile on the other. In the chapter written by Emma C. Bunker, one of the golden deer of Filipovka (Fig. 41) from between the 4 th-3 rd centuries BC is published as a comparative example. Its body is decorated with similar curvilinear forms as the bodies of the antlered creatures on the Shanpula tapestries. The first is a wooden carving covered by thin golden foil, the second is woven textile. No textile fragments were recovered from Filipovka, consequently we have no comparative material in the same medium from a distant location with a time difference of two centuries. Emma Bunker wrote a thirty-page long chapter which starts with the definition of the cultural horizon of the textile finds. She discusses the three different types of tombs, then concludes that Shanpula is not an elite burial
