Terracotta Figurines in the Persian Achaemenid Near East: New Perspectives from the Unpublished Materials of Tell Mardikh, Syria

兵马俑是古代近东物质文化的重要组成部分，在阿契美尼德王朝时期似乎也占有中心地位，特别是在帝国的西部地区。缺乏对这些材料的全面研究有几个原因：因为它们是小雕像，通常被解释为流行文化的产品，也可能是因为它们是波斯时期的，其水平在古代叙利亚和美索不达米亚的考古文献中往往被低估。另有两个因素对这一时期的雕像进行了适当的评价，并在公元前1世纪下半叶叙利亚及其邻近地区的材料和肖像全景图中形成了适当的研究方法：缺乏可靠的地层背景，以及根据误导性的解释类别对拟人雕像进行评估，如着装与裸体女性雕像，希腊人与裸体女性雕像，希腊人与裸体女性雕像。“东方”肖像，神与奉献者。其结果是一个很难打破的学术构建的解释框架。在来自波斯阿契美尼德时期已出版标本的不完整全景中，从Tell Mardikh及其未出版材料(约3000件)的角度研究波斯阿契美尼德近东的可塑性生产打开了一个重要的研究机会，这要归功于三个主要元素：1)语料库的扩展；2)物源的受控地层学；3)物源的建筑背景。考虑到过去对波斯阿契美尼德时期雕像的研究要点，该项目的主要目标可以总结如下：1)基于相关属性的识别、分类和等级划分，创建泰勒马尔迪克的陶俑目录；2)建立陶俑与泰勒马尔迪克的地层和建筑之间的明确联系；3)从属性、生产技术以及建筑背景方面重新评估叙利亚其他遗址(中部、沿海和东部)包含相同时期类似雕像的组合，从而创建分布图并与邻近地区进行比较；4)评估解释兵马俑生产、使用和分布的考古和历史框架；以及该时期兵马俑记录的肖像在叙利亚、地中海和近东的流通情况。

Terracotta figurines form an important part of the material culture of the ancient Near East and seem to have a central position also under the Achaemenids, especially in the western regions of the Empire. A comprehensive study of these materials has been lacking for several reasons: because they are figurines, which are often interpreted as products of popular culture, and perhaps also because they are of Persian period, whose levels are often underrepresented in the archaeological literature of ancient Syria and Mesopotamia. Two further factors negatively contributed to the proper evaluation of the figurines of this period and to the formulation of a proper method of research in the panorama of materials and iconographies of Syria and neighboring regions at the turn of the second half of the first Millennium BC: the lack of a reliable stratigraphical context and the evaluation of anthropomorphic figurines in the light of misleading categories of interpretation, such as dressed vs. naked female figures, Greek vs. “Oriental” iconography, deity vs. devotee. The consequence is a scholarly constructed framework of interpretation which is difficult to break.In the incomplete panorama of published specimens from the Persian Achaemenid period, the study of the coroplastic production in the Persian Achaemenid Near East from the perspective of Tell Mardikh and its unpublished materials (ca. 3000 pieces) opens an important opportunity of research thanks to three main elements: 1) the extension of the corpus; 2) the controlled stratigraphy of provenance; 3) the architectural context of provenance. Considering the critical points of the past research devoted to the figurines of the Persian Achaemenid period highlighted above, the main objectives of the project can be thus summarized as follows:1) to create a catalogue of the pieces from Tell Mardikh based on the identification, classification, and hierarchization of relevant attributes; 2) to establish a definitive association between the terracotta figurines and the stratigraphy and architecture of Tell Mardikh;3) to re-evaluate the assemblages containing similar figurines of the same period from other sites in Syria (central, coastal and eastern) in terms of attributes, technique of production as well as stratigraphy and architectural context, thus creating a distributional map and comparison to neighboring regions;4) to assess an archaeological and historical framework of interpretation of the production, use and distribution of terracotta figurines; and the circulation of the iconographies documented in the terracotta figurines of the period throughout Syria, the Mediterranean and the Near East.