Tamga Troubles: Marked Ceramics in First Millennium Southwest Afghanistan
Mitchell Allen, ARF Research Associate
ARF Presentation Nov 13, 2024
Potter’s marks affixed to ceramic vessels are common throughout the Ancient Near East, but have a special nature when they appear further east among ancient Central Asian pastoral cultures. Called tamga, a set of over 200 marks were discovered on pottery in the Sistan region of southwest Afghanistan by the Helmand Sistan Project, far from the bulk of known tamga sites. This presentation will outline the perplexing context of these artifacts in Sistan and suggest some possible contributions to our understanding of Central Asian tamga practices and meanings.
Mitchell Allen is a Research Associate at Archaeological Research Facility at UC Berkeley. He has a Ph.D. in Archaeology from UCLA (1997) and taught that subject in five universities. Currently, he is writing up the results of a legacy survey project, the Helmand Sistan Project, Afghanistan, on which he was a junior archaeologist in the 1970s. In addition to his work in archaeology, Allen spent 40 years as an academic publisher, including founding and running two independent scholarly presses, AltaMira Press and Left Coast Press, which specialized in archaeology. Allen researches and writes on archaeology, scholarly publishing, qualitative research, ethnic dance, and related subjects. He is the recipient of awards from the World Archaeological Congress and three other scholarly organizations.