Paper short abstract:

Re-examining raptor decorations and rock art imagery made by the Early Nomadic peoples of Kazakhstan during the early 1st millennium BCE as biographical objects.

Paper long abstract:

During the early 1st millennium BCE, the Early Nomads of Central Asia utilised an iconographic repertoire of wild animals, including raptors, to decorate personal objects that is considered to belong to the so-called Scytho-Siberian 'animal style'. The concept of an 'animal style' arose at the beginning of the 20th century and was based in the traditional art historical approach that led to the ordering of zoomorphic imagery within Western hierarchies of design, execution and evolution. When looking at Early Nomadic golden raptor decorations the striking nature of their visuality leads to analysis that privileges the physical form of the decorated object over the social processes that they were embedded within. The avian forms, however, are also depicted as flat silhouettes in scenes of rock art that are located in secluded places in the landscape. By focusing on examples of grave goods and rock art from the Kazakhstan fresher perspectives can be gained about raptor imagery by re-examining their contextual complexities through the biography of objects. The raptors were much more than mere ornamentations as they were part and parcel of local knowledges deeply entangled in the lives of peoples from past societies.