THE GOLDEN BOWL: MATERIAL CULTURE AND EMPIRE IN ACHAEMEN ID BACTRIA

In this paper, two dialectically related lines of argument will be pursued. On the one hand, building upon the model of the Achaemenid «imperial paradigm» recently laid out by Wouter Henkelman, it contends that a corpus of luxury tableware allegedly coming from Bactria might provide further archaeological evidence for the «institutionalization process» of the empire’s Far East which is implied by the steadily growing evidence coming from Persepolis. On the other hand, particular attention shall be paid to the sociopolitical role played by the objects discussed, both from the standpoint of the Persian (royal as well as satrapal) court, which this tableware most likely produced and circulated through the whole empire, and from that of the individuals who made use of it. The comparison of the Bactrian evidence with parallel finds known from other satrapies across the imperial domains, from Egypt to Armenia and from Chorasmia to Gāndḥārā, will provide the background against which to explore the human-thing entanglements that the consumption of these culturally dense objects set in motion and mediated, as well as the consequences of said entanglements for the history of Achaemenid power in Bactria. It will in fact be argued that, if on the one hand they played a paramount role in consolidating the position of the imperial ruling class – and in expanding its members’ social networks both on the regional and the broader, imperial scale, on the other, both the objects per se and their social affordances (what they did as well as what they enable the owners to do) also opened up significant sociopolitical space for the local élites in order to negotiate their status both within the wider A chaemenid world and, what perhaps matters most, in that of the Central Asian societies in which they lived.