The Ornamental Motifs and the Method of their Representation in the II Millennium BC Silver Vessels

Abstract

The Trialeti Culture of Brilliant Kurgans is one of the exceptionally achieved phenomenon in South Caucasus, which, beside the other variable materials, is characterized with the numerous patterns of the toreutics. Appearance of the rich metal vessels as the distinguishable assemblages of high artistic craft coincide with the start of famous Trialeti Culture. There is not even a single case recorded of the metal vessel’s discovery in south Caucasian previous cultural units. Therefore, toreutics seems especially symptomatic from the point of view of flourishment and highest level of development of the gold working for the mentioned culture.

Presented issue is dedicated to the problem of ornamental motifs and the methods of their representation on the vessels. There are some very important special researches done by Georgian and foreign scholars but they are mainly analyses of one or some other famous items and not the various aspects of the entire silver assemblages. Currently, our attempt is to consider those characteristic motifs, stylistic features, ornamental program and technique of their representation which appears symptomatic for this item of the Trialeti culture. The precious silver items of it are a clear manifestation of a fairly developed level of gold working, which signals about the progressing interconnections with the southern neighbouring ancient civilizations.

Formation of the incomparable silver assemblages of the Trialeti Culture, beside some dominant local reasons was determined by other factors, among which we must include increasingly brisk contacts with the ancient Near East. The highly artistic and finecrafted silver items clearly show that trialetian goldsmiths were familiar with the achievements and traditions of the Near East. We assume that by adopting nearly all achievements of near eastern artistic craft, Trialetian toreutics faithfully imitated most of the innovations in technique, decorative motifs, symbols or in the manner of manufacturing patterns known in the bordering southern regions. Therefore, in Trialetian gold working different cultural traditions might be distinguished, which supposedly were the result of the merging and transformation of local and near eastern traditions of artistic craft. This development was clearly related with the political processes and the changes in socio-economical relations which took place between the end of the 3rd and the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC.

Also, it is very important to understand how Trialetian craftsmen constructed their iconographic program: did they only slightly modify those iconographic concepts which were used in the Near East or, based on them, they create a new artistic style, i.e. an original one, by themselves? In other terms, did Trialetian craftsmen create an original, “pure” local iconographic style, or was it mainly depending on what was suggested by Near Eastern traditions? This is a question which is logically posed by scholars when they consider the issue of the roots of the Trialeti Culture toreutics. The abovementioned problematic issues require continuing research of scholars but what is anyway obvious is that Trialetian craftsmen were very well aware of Near Eastern schools of artistic crafts.

 The toreutic assemblage of the Trialeti Culture can be grouped into the following types: a) especially richly decorated vessels. Various designs, including complicated combinations of ritual scenes, symbolic, zoomorphic and geometrical images which are usually found on such items; b) vessels, the surface of which is only decorated by zoomorphic and geometrical designs or a limited extent of them; c) vessels with undecorated surface, where some technical methods of ornamenting are used on the handle or the base.

The stylistic programme, different motifs of decoration and their representation are discussed in the presented article.