CHINESE LACQUERWARES FROM BEGRAM: DATE AND PROVENANCE

In: International journal of Asian studies, Band 8, Heft 1, S. 1-24

Abstract

In the 1930s, the French Archaeological Delegation discovered a few fragments of Chinese lacquerwares at the Hellenistic town of Begram in Afghanistan. These lacquerware fragments, along with other artifacts from this site, have puzzled generations of scholars. Through a comparison of these fragments with lacquerwares discovered in China proper and beyond, this article offers a new chronology of the period from 74 BC to AD 23. This temporal frame corresponds to a time when the social life of Begram is vague in historical records, but it appears that the local aristocracy, for a period of about a hundred years, must have had some political and economic interactions with the late Western Han and Xin dynasties.