Western, Eastern, both, or neither? Translocalism as alternative approach to syncretism and hybridity in Hellenistic Bactria

Western, Eastern, both, or neither? Translocalism as alternative approach to syncretism and hybridity in Hellenistic Bactria Milinda Hoo ABSTRACT Ideas of Hellenistic Central Asia as acultural melting pot, resulting from the fusion of Eastern and Western cultures after Alexander the Great, continue to have considerable scholarly and popular appeal. While the Western component of the supposed melting pot generally stands for Greek influence as adynamic actuating force, the Eastern component often seems to refer not to ‘eastern’ from aBactrian perspective, but rather to astatic idea of continuous local culture– essentialized as Eastern from aclassical Mediterranean -centred point of view. Focused on the Niched Temple at Ai Khanoum and the Oxus Temple at Takht -iSangin, this paper aims to rethink conventional taxonomies of ‘Western’, ‘Eastern’, and the convenient ‘hybrid’ by examining cultural interaction and religious syncretism from atranslocal approach, sharpened by the situated perspective of communities of practice. Communities of practice are formed by people who share aset of practices which are learned by doing. Consideration of such communities not only grants analytical space for actors with different levels of learned participation but also for various potential identifications beyond ethno -geographical ones. This article explores the concept for Hellenistic Bactria and addresses heuristic problems of common assumptions of community and identity while drawing attention to various synchronous interactions and forms of identifications behind etically identified Hellenism, syncretism, and hybridity. KEY WORDS Hellenistic Bactria; Ai Khanoum; Temple with Indented Niches; Takht -iSangin; Oxus temple; identity; syncretism; hybridity; translocalism; community of practice. INTRODUCTION: BACTRIA ‘BETWEEN EAST AND WEST’ Ancient Bactria is no longer an alien periphery. Apart from asubstantial increase in specialized studies of what is now commonly referred to as the Hellenistic Far East, Bactria has come to taken centre stage in more mainstream narratives of Hellenistic history as the ultimate example of what ‘the Hellenistic’ entails. 1 For Peter Thonemann in his Oxford Very Short Introduction of the Hellenistic Age, Ai Khanoum’sDelphic maxims– brought to Afghanistan by an educated traveller named Klearchos who inscribed them on astone stele in the temenos of Kineas– would embody precisely those movements and interactions characteristic of the Hellenistic world.2 Oftentimes, such relics of movement and interactions are taken to embody ‘Greeks in the East’, as vividly 1 This paper was originally written in 2018 and is based on theoretical reflections in my doctoral dissertation (Hoo 2022). Adraft was presented at the second Hellenistic Central Asia Research Colloquium ‘Ritual Matters’ in Berlin, 2017. Ithank Gunvor Lindström, Ladislav Stančo, and Jan Kysela for comments and editing. 2 Thonemann 2016, 1–3. For the Delphic maxims, see Robert 1968; Rougemont 2012, no. 97a–c. Acomparable evocation of ‘the Hellenistic’ has also been made by Walbank 1981, 60–64. STUDIA HERCYNIA XXVII/1, 124–150 125MILINDA HOO described by John Boardman in his similar -titled monograph.3 Boardman’s Greeks in Asia is about ‘what happened when Greeks met easterners’, tracing ‘the Greeks, the “Greek”, and the more broadly “classical” in Asia’.4 We all have ageneral idea about what is meant by ‘the Greek’ and ‘the classical’, but what precisely do these terms imply methodologically? Boardman’sclarification is both candid and confusing: by Greeks, he means Westerners who came from the East, but it is their classical Greek culture whose contributions to the East he seeks to examine.5 Research on the Hellenistic Far East has been propelled by similar interests in the coming together of– to speak in Boardman’sterms– Westerners, Easterners, and ‘their’ respective cultures, however heterogeneous they may have been. With the major discoveries of Ai Khanoum and Takht -iSangin, Bactria has become the paradigmatic cultural melting pot, where ‘the Greek heirs of Alexander’ created ‘asurprisingly rich mixture of eastern and western traditions’.6 While the idea that cultures mix, merge, and melt is not wrong per se, it does not add much explanatory value: what culture is not inherently mixed? Moreover, ubiquitous catchphrases of East -Western inbetweenness such as hybridity and syncretism to describe and characterize Bactria’smaterial culture only seem to uphold groupist culture -historical views that predefine and (al)locate Eastern cultures (Iranian, Indian, Chinese) as geographically distinct, essentially consistent, and ontologically juxtaposed to equally unitary Western cultures (Greek and Macedonian), before they mix and merge.7 Focusing on pre -theoretical assumptions that scholars tend to make when assessing culturally mixed material, this paper reflects conceptually and comments critically on the heuristic tools we use to make sense of the cultural melting pot that Hellenistic Bactria supposedly was. Often, as will be shown, incongruent interpretations follow from the habitual practice of identifying and classifying ‘original’ Western and Eastern traditions in the hybrid mix– the essential ingredients of the melting pot. This practice is deeply rooted in aproblematic yet widely used global geography which structures (knowledge of) the world according to ideas of continental reification (Europe and Asia as immutable territorial entities) and geographical diffusionism (unidirectional movement of influence from West to East).8 Although deep historical cross -influences and other interconnecting aspects that undermine the consistency and unity of lumpish longitudinal divisions of East and West have long been recognized, monocultural (and often Hellenocentric) ideas of distinct Western as opposed to Eastern traditions often still inform the conceptual frameworks and methodologies scholars use to analyse and interpret ‘mixed’ material culture.9 3 Boardman 2015, 86. 4 Boardman 2015, 8. 5 He refers to the Eastern i.e. Indo -European roots of the Greeks– pointing out that the original homeland of Indo -Europeans was in Central Asia; citation at Boardman 2015, 16. 6 Holt 1999, 17. See also Bernard 2005. The view of Bactria as an intriguing place ‘between East and West’ has been popularized in lavishly and beautifully illustrated museum publications which highlight the region’smaterial eclecticism on the ‘Crossroads of Asia’ (Erringtonetal. eds. 1992). See also Hiebert– Cambon eds. 2008; Aruz– Valtz Fino eds. 2012. 7 See further below, and footnote 65. 8 Such an approach has been termed by JamesM. Blaut as a‘Eurocentric colonizer’smodel of the world’ (Blaut 1993; see also Blaut 1987; Lewis– Wigen 1997). Blaut (1993, 1) defines diffusionism as ‘atheory about the way cultural processes tend to move over the surface of the world as awhole. They tend to flow out of the European sector and towards the non -European sector. This is the natural, normal, logical, and ethical flow of culture, of innovation, of human causality’. 9 With ‘mixed’ material culture, Irefer to objects, art, and architecture which embody both Western and Eastern -categorized elements, and therefore receive various labels that indicate their 126 STUDIA HERCYNIA XXVII/1 Attempting to address this perennial problem differently, Ipropose atranslocal approach to cultural interaction, religious syncretism, and their implications for communities in Hellenistic Bactria. The term translocalism captures the dynamics of belonging to (and identifying with) more than one location in the face of increasing global connectivity, while acknowledging that place and local emplacement are still important factors in people’slives.10 To illustrate such an approach, Idiscuss the heuristic concept of communities of practice to reflect on ‘ritual taxonomic ambiguity: hybrid, syncretic, creole, or aconvenient hyphenated word combining the recognized influences (‘Graeco -Bactrian’). 10 See further Hoo 2022, 240–243. Fig. 1: Plan of Ai Khanoum during the reign of Eucratides, ca. 150 BCE. The main sanctuary with the Niched Temple is located in the lower city along the main street (©DAFA: J.‑C. Liger, C. Ra‑ pin, courtesy of Laurianne Martinez ‑Sève). 127MILINDA HOO matters’ across conventional cultural categories. This perspective draws attention to an often taken for granted variety of identification forms based on (trans)local practice, rather than reducing identity to asolely or predominantly ethnic or cultural ascription. The Temple with Indented Niches at Ai Khanoum and the Oxus Temple at Takht -iSangin serve as case studies to illuminate common interpretations of Bactria’scultural mixture and to explore how atranslocal perspective sheds different light on various synchronous interactions behind etically identified (typologies of) Hellenism, syncretism, or hybridity.11 AI KHANOUM: THE NICHED TEMPLE At Ai Khanoum on the banks of the Panj and Kokcha River, dated to the early 3rd century until the mid-2nd century BCE, two temples (one outside city walls and one in the lower city) and an open -air podium on the raised ‘acropolis’ have been unearthed by the Délégation Archéologique Française en Afghanistan led by Paul Bernard in the 1960s and 1970s (Fig.1).12 These structures have attracted considerable debate as the city’smost intriguing and culturally surprising features because of their decidedly non -Greek character and their presence in what has been described as an extraordinary Hellenic urban landscape– aGreek polis, even, marked by the theatre, gymnasium, mausoleum, and the Greek inscriptions. 13 As Bactria’sonly extensively excavated monumental city of the Hellenistic period, it were these foreign features that sparked wide scholarly and public interest. 14 Although the theatre and gymnasium date to the very last decades of the city’slife -span, Ai Khanoum famously came to represent an exotic outpost of Hellenism on the fringes of the Hellenistic world, sometimes even exemplary for what Hellenism in the East entailed.15 Within this idea of Hellenism– often used to frame and explain the supposed Greekness in material remains– the architecture of Ai Khanoum’stemples is often regarded as culturally anomalous: aspects that do not quite fit the expected urban landscape of aGreek city.16 Built from local mud bricks, oriented towards the sun, with massive 11 The emic/etic distinction is widely used in anthropological literature and refers to the divergent perceptions of (in this case) historical reality as experienced by insiders (emic views of ancient people) and outsiders (etic views of the modern observer). 12 For general overviews of Ai Khanoum see, for instance, Bernard 2001; 2009; Francfortetal. eds. 2014. Martinez -Sève (2015) has determined the site’schronology to extend from the early 3rd century (associated with Antiochus I) to around the mid-2nd century BCE, after which the city experienced awave of destruction and ashort -lived period of reoccupation. 13 See e.g. Bernard 1967, 71; Bernard 1982; Aruz 2012, 3; Frye 2012, 105. Recent scholarship has been more nuanced in assessments of the city, see e.g. Mairs 2013a; Mairs 2014a, 57–101; Mairs 2014b; Hoo 2015; Martinez -Sève 2016; Hoo 2018. 14 Public interest was furthered by the successful worldwide travelling exhibition Afghanistan, les trésors retrouvés, shown in several European countries (e.g., Paris, Musée Guimet 2006), later as Afghanistan: Hidden Treasures from the National Museum, Kabul (2006–2016), which introduced Ai Khanoum and the Afghan heritage to avast and varied audience. See e.g. Cambon– Jarrige eds. 2006; Hiebert– Cambon eds. 2008. 15 Thonemann 2018, 1–5. For Ai Khanoum as an outpost of Hellenism, see: Bernard 1967, 77, 91; Bernard 2008, 83. Although Bernard has nuanced his opinion in later publications, the notion of Ai Khanoum as an outpost of Hellenism has become arecurring trope to describe and present the city in wider scholarship (Mairs 2014a, 22). For Ai Khanoum as aparadigm for Hellenism in the (Far) East, see Holt 1999, 9–14; Mairs 2013a, 88. 16 Colledge (1987, 142) for instance, puzzled by the presence of Mesopotamian religious architecture in ‘the Greek settlement’ of Ai Khanoum, illustratively wonders, ‘Why here?’ 128 STUDIA HERCYNIA XXVII/1 thick walls, and raised on high, sometimes stepped platforms, the city’sreligious structures featured distinct elements that had little in common with Greek temples as known from the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean. Because Ai Khanoum’sreligious architecture and its relation to the urban and wider Central Asian context have been discussed in more detail in previous scholarship, Ilimit myself here to abrief overview of the city’scentral shrine: the Temple with Indented Niches.17 The Temple with Indented Niches (Fig. 2), or the Niched Temple hereafter, was located on the main street in the urban centre in the lower city (la ville basse), just south of the monumental gateway to the palace complex. The Niched Temple was the renovated version of one of the oldest structures in Ai Khanoum, which had been founded by Antiochus Iand was rebuilt several times. Five architectural phases have been identified, starting from the early 3rd century BCE to roughly the 1st century BCE, when the edifice was destroyed by afire.18 Set within awide sanctuary, with thick, white -washed walls and raised on ahigh -stepped platform, the main temple retained its basic features and squared ground plan throughout its use -life, characterized by abroad, east -oriented antechamber opening up to the main cult room. 19 In the second half of the 3rd century BCE, probably under the first Graeco -Bactrian kings Diodotus I and Diodotus II, the edifice was levelled and its internal organization modified: the high podium transformed into athree -tiered stepped platform, two narrow, corridor -like side chambers (‘sacristies’) were added to the flanks of the main chamber, and the temple’souter walls were embellished with niches formed by triple indentations which gave the shrine its archaeological name (Fig. 2).20 In the last ‘post -Greek’ or ‘post -palatial’ occupation phase after 145 BCE, parts of the edifice came to function as storage place before being destroyed by the city -wide fire.21 Scholars have interpreted the temple’swhite -washed exterior, the high -stepped podium, and the decoration of indented niches as ‘Iranian’, while its squared ground plan with acentral chamber, antechamber, and flanking corridor -like chambers, have been analysed as ‘Near Eastern’ based on close similarities with religious architecture in Syria -Mesopotamia (Dura Europos), Iran (Bard -e Nešānda), and Central Asia (Takht -iSangin, Diľberdzhin).22 Although these architectural elements have frequently been grouped as ‘Oriental traditions’– implicitly opposing all things Eastern, to Western material culture– the objects, found in the temple and the wider sanctuary, led to considerable debate on the temple cult and its religious community.23 Ivory furniture fittings, plaster casts, and marble fragments of aco17 Also known as the temple à niches indentées or temple à redans in the archaeological reports. More extensive discussions on Ai Khanoum’stemples in their urban and regional context can be found in Bernard 1990; Rapin 1992; Martinez -Sève 2010a; Francfort 2012, and for the Niched Temple in particular Martinez -Sève 2010b; Mairs 2013a; Martinez -Sève 2021 on its wider sanctuary. For the excavation reports on the main sanctuary, the temple, and the small objects found there, see Bernard 1969; 1970; 1971; 1972; Francfort 1984; Martinez -Sève 2013. 18 Bernard 1971, 419–429, updated in Martinez -Sève 2010b; and recent publication in Martinez- -Sève 2018a (on the last stages of the temple); Martinez -Sève 2021 (on the chapels in the wider sanctuary). 19 The temple’sthree -tiered platform was later replaced by asingle podium that could be accessed by aramp or astaircase. 20 Bernard 1973, 92; Martinez -Sève 2010b, 201–202. 21 Bernard 1970, 327; Bernard 1971, 429; Francfort 1984, 2–3. Francfort (2012, 124) comments that the added storage function did not have to exclude continuing cult activities taking place on temple grounds. Further essential discussion in Martinez -Sève 2018a, 382–405. 22 Bernard 1969, 334–336; Bernard 1976, 250–252; Colledge 1987, 142–146; Downey 1988, 75–76; Bernard 1990, 51–54; Rapin 1992; Shenkar 2011, 128. 23 Bernard 1969, 337; Bernard 1976; Shenkar 2011, 127. 129MILINDA HOO lossal sandaled foot of alarger -than -life cult statue, labelled as Greek in form and style, led the excavators to propose the worship of aGreek deity.24 Much attention has gone to the sandaled foot, which had been carved in anaturalistic, Greek style and decorated with awinged thunderbolt, alongside two rosettes and apalmetto motif. The thunderbolt, in combination with the visual depiction of thundering Zeus on contemporaneous coins of Diodotus Iand Diodotus II, have further prompted scholars to hypothesize that the recipient of Ai Khanoum’smain cult was Zeus, or asyncretistic, composite deity, such as Zeus -Ahura Mazda, Zeus -Mithra, or Zeus -Oxus.25 Scholarship has eagerly welcomed these Greek aspects of the main sanctuary, as they allowed for the interpretation that Ai Khanoum’sEastern religious 24 Bernard 1969, 337–341; Bernard 1970, 327; Francfort 1984, 35–37, 117. 25 For Zeus -Ahura Mazda, see Bernard 1970, 327. For Zeus -Mithra, see Boyce– Grenet 1991, 162–165; Grenet 1991; Rapin 1992, 120. For Zeus -Oxus, see Martinez -Sève 2010a, 13. Cf. Francfort 1984, Fig. 2: Ground plan of the main temple at Ai Khanoum (phase III: le temple à niches indentées), beginning of the 2nd century BCE. ©DAFA: J.‑C. Liger, A.‑B. Pimpaud, courtesy of Laurianne Martinez ‑Sève. 130 STUDIA HERCYNIA XXVII/1 architecture could readily have accommodated its inhabitants‘ presumed Greekness– something which would fit well with the town’stheatre, gymnasium, and Greek inscriptions. Other objects unearthed in and around the Niched Temple, however, point to amultiplicity of cult and votive practices. In use throughout the Graeco -Bactrian period, aseries of vessels were found buried upside down in libation pits, aligned at the back wall of the temple, which hint at practice of chthonic rituals for a(sub)terranean deity rather than for (or alongside) aouranic god like Zeus.26 Alarge stone basin was excavated for practices related to water, the importance of which may be confirmed by the presence of awater pipe leading from east to west at the south side of the sanctuary, and aconnecting drain leading towards the centre of the courtyard. 27 Numerous small limestone pedestals, shaped in the form of column bases, were unearthed in the temple’santechamber and in the east section of the sanctuary, some dating to the shrine’soldest layers.28 Francfort suggested that these pedestals may have served to support incense, small statues, or functioning as portable altars; he argued that whatever their purpose was, their presence in other Bactrian temple contexts suggests that this particular cult practice was probably considered alocal tradition by its users.29 Among the cultic objects were also anumber of schist bowls and vessels with coloured incrustations– including arhyton and several compartmented pyxides, identified as local craftsmanship– as well as votive offerings of ivory and terracotta figurines of animals, fertility goddesses, and Persian horsemen in what have been classified as Asiatic and Persian styles. Asilver plate with adepiction of the Anatolian goddess Cybele on achariot drawn by lions was found in one of the side chambers. Furthermore, minerals and precious stones were unearthed on several places inside the temple while large clay sculptures and plaster casts of human figures in naturalistic style were found in the shrine’smain chamber, indicating not only alocal workshop in the wider sanctuary but also the possibility of statues of donors or kings placed within sacred premises.30 Despite the variety of cult objects and practices, and the consensus that the shrine’sarchitecture was recognized as distinctly non -Greek, the significance of Ai Khanoum’sNiched Temple has mainly followed the lines of scholarly interest in the importance or impact of Hellenism– understood as ‘Greek influence’– and the maintenance of Greek settler identity.31 This makes sense in the historiography of Ai Khanoum wherein its urban status as ‘aGreek city’ has rarely been questioned, due to the presence of atheatre, gymnasium, amausoleum, and Greek inscriptions which record Greek names (alongside Iranian and local Bactrian names). In areflexive urge to view the temple against the expectations of aGreek city, scholars have 124–125; and especially Francfort 2012 who proposes acult of Oxus -Cybele, rather than Zeus or Zeus -based worship, see Martinez -Sève 2018b in response. 26 For the libation vessels, see Bernard 1970, 327–330; Bernard 1971, 427; further discussed by Francfort 2012, 116–119; Martinez -Sève 2018a, 402. 27 The location of the stone basin in the sanctuary is unknown, as it had been displaced and reused; see Francfort 1984, 89; Francfort 2012, 110. For the water pipe and drain, see Bernard 1974, 298; Francfort 2012, 113. 28 Francfort 1984, 81–84. 29 Francfort 1984, 82, 84; Francfort 2012, 112. Similar pedestals have been found particularly at Takht -iSangin (Litvinsky– Pichikyan 2002), and most recently in situ at the newly discovered site Torbulok in Tajikistan (referred to in Russian terminology as ‘microbases’), see Lindström 2017, 170. 30 Bernard 1969, 329; Francfort 1984, 14–29, 39–47, 73–79, 81–84, 93–104; for the wider sanctuary, see Martinez -Sève 2021; for considerations of apossible ruler cult, see now Mairs 2022; Hoo forthcoming. 31 Most explicitly in Francfort 1984, 117, but see also Mairs 2008; Francfort 2012; and most recently Martinez -Sève 2016. 131MILINDA HOO therefore focused their attention mainly on its meaning for asupposed Greek community who would have engaged with, and practiced their religion at the Temple with Intended Niches. Amuch reproduced interpretation, Frank Holt argued that the Greeks of Ai Khanoum ‘consciously favoured Hellenism while conforming to local conditions as anecessary expedient.’32 For Holt, the Greeks of this ‘brave new world’ that was Bactria lived in an ethnic survival -mode; they craved and preserved their Greekness in all aspects of life, while indigenous Bactrians either lived in social isolation from Greek elites or fully assimilated to Greek culture, behaviour, and religion. 33 Boris Litvinsky similarly saw in Ai Khanum ‘aGreek city with apredominantly Hellenic population, thinking, speaking, writing, and reading in Greek and worshipping Greek gods’, whereas ‘the native Bactrian residents, though few in number, were evidently utterly hellenized.’34 Other scholars, too, suggested that the Greeks at Ai Khanoum must have had no problem with practicing Greek religion in non -Greek temples. The ‘Greek’ marble sandaled foot, it was argued, must have represented Zeus, possibly in syncretized form with aNear Eastern or Iranian deity because of the temple’s‘Oriental’ architecture.35 While this may well have been the case, the argument reflects arather traditional, essentialist stance in which architectural and sculptural styles need to equate with ethno -cultural contents and meaning. Accordingly, by virtue of the methodological complication created by the premises that 1) aGreek styled foot must represent aGreek god, and that 2) Mesopotamian or Iranian styled architecture requires aMesopotamian or Iranian deity, scholars have sought refuge in the notion of syncretism and cultural flexibility. It would have been through such commendable flexibility that the Greeks of Ai Khanoum were able to integrate contradictory (i.e., non -Greek or not overtly Greek) elements without compromising the integrity of their assertion of ethnic Greek belonging.36 TAKHT ‑ISANGIN: THE OXUS TEMPLE In the case of the Oxus Temple at the site of Takht -iSangin in southern Tajikistan, not only the lines of inquiry have been slightly different, but also the interpretational language of the art, architecture, and cult practices. While the Niched Temple has been given meaning within the perimeters of Hellenism as the expression of ethnic Greekness, the sanctuary at Takht -iSangin is often described and presented as an Eastern -Iranian or Bactrian temple site. Located some 100 km downstream west of Ai Khanoum at the river junction of the Vakhsh (ancient Oxus) and the Panj– which together form the Amu Darya River– the Oxus Temple is at present the largest Hellenistic -period sanctuary in Bactria. It was excavated by several archaeological teams: first by the Yuzhno ‑Tadzhikskaya Arkheologicheskaya Ekspeditsiya (South32 Holt 1999, 46. 33 Holt 1999, 120–122. Note that the theatre and the gymnasium– often referred to as the pillars of Hellenism– were constructed relatively late in the history of the city. This does not particularly bespeak such an immediate craving for the preservation of Greekness (if the theatre and gymnasium were actually considered by its emic users as Greek indicia); discussion in Hoo 2018; Hoo forthcoming. 34 Litvinsky 2010, 36–37. 35 See footnote 24. 36 Mairs (2008) calls this ‘ethnically neutralization or rationalization of “contradictory” non -Greek buildings and practices’. Later, Mairs (2013b and Mairs 2014a, esp. 102–103) nuances her interpretation of Greek ethnicity, focusing more on aHellenistic Bactrian cultural identity, rather than an ethnic Greek identity. 132 STUDIA HERCYNIA XXVII/1 ern Tajik Archaeological Expedition) headed by Boris Litvinsky and Igor Pichikyan from 1976 to 1991 and then, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, by Anjelina Drujinina of the Academy of Sciences of Tajikistan in cooperation with the Miho Museum in Japan. The small finds from the Oxus Temple were examined most recently by Gunvor Lindström, in the frame of aproject that focused on votive practices in Hellenistic Bactria. It is perhaps the involvement of these various parties in the site’sexcavation that resulted in different conceptualizations of the temple, its constituency, and the role of Hellenism. Fig. 3: Ground plan of the Oxus sanctuary at Takht ‑iSangin, second half of the 2nd century BCE. ©DAI, Eurasien‑Abteilung, courtesy of Gunvor Lindström. 139MILINDA HOO Such an inward and stagnant conception of localism critically places it outside history, restricting and overlooking internal changes and larger dimensions of local cultural developments. Any form of social life is constantly in flux and in aprocess of (re)production on avariety of scales. Change is aconstant and inherent part of the dynamics of localism, just as it is part of what we consider as Hellenism. As stated by Anthony Giddens, ‘what structures the locale is not simply that which is present on the scene; the “visible form” of the locale conceals the distanciated relations which determine its nature.’74 Local consciousness and performances of identity, however bounded and integral in (material) appearance, are never static and geographically restricted, but rather relational, networked, and discursively formed in avariety of social contexts, as they are linked to continuous processes of change– both from within and without. The local, therefore, is never exclusively local, but rather translocal. 75 TRANSLOCALISM AND COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE The theoretical premise that localism is inherently and structurally translocal, has important implications for significations of localism, Hellenism, and East -Western syncretism in Hellenistic Bactria– and by extension the wider interconnected world of Hellenistic Afro -Eurasia in which Bactria was entangled. Translocalism– aterm at home within the vocabulary of current globalization research– articulates the simultaneous global and local processes of being and becoming, of people’ssynchronous and diachronous identifications with multiple locations (in the broadest sense of the word), while living emplaced.76 As stated by Zygman Bauman, ‘we are all on the move, even if physically, bodily, we stay put.’77 One way in which we can make more sense of how translocalism operates on the level of material culture, is through the notion of communities of practice. Shedding light on different and overlapping kinds of communities that can transcend physical space, this notion provides the conceptual tools to inform and guide scholarly lenses through the implications of translocalism for ‘Ritual Matters’ and communal identities. The concept of communities of practice was first introduced by anthropologist Jean Lave and educational theorist Étienne Wenger in their 1991 book Situated Learning, followed by Wenger’s1999 more detailed monograph Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identi‑ ty.78 Central to these works is the theorization of how translocal identification, the negotiation of meaning, and community coherence are realized through learned social practice. Learned social practice refers to engagement in forms of co -participation which are embedded in ‘relations amongst people in activity in, with, and arising from the socially and culturally structured 74 Giddens 1990, 19. See also Appadurai 1996, 189. 75 Appadurai 1996, 178–199. 76 As phrased by Arturo Escobar (2001, 141) culture still ‘sits in places’. See also Eriksen 1992; Morley– Robinson 1995, esp. 128–130; Hastrup– Olwig eds. 1997; Dirlik 1999; Escobar 2001; Friedman 2002. For translocalism, see especially Appadurai 1996, 178–199 and relevant discussion in Hoo 2022, 240–243. 77 Bauman 1998, 2, 77. 78 Lave– Wenger 1991; Wenger 1999. Although relatively unknown in classics, the impact of Lave and Wenger’sworks has been enormous across disciplines. As asocial theory of learning, the concept has particularly gained wide popularity in the fields of education studies, organization studies, and business management. Only relatively recently has the concept caught on in historical and archaeological studies, mainly in connection to material culture studies. See, for instance, Minar– Crown 2001; Sassaman– Rudolphi 2001; Feldman 2014; and recently Poddick– Stahl eds. 2016. 140 STUDIA HERCYNIA XXVII/1 world.’79 Whereas traditional definitions usually associate communities with ageographical locality, communities of practice highlight community construction through ‘aset of relations among persons, activity, and world, over time and in relation with other tangential and overlapping communities of practice.’80 As such, they are not spatially fixed groups or culture- -historical entities, but should be seen as socially networked structures of knowledge which are ‘formed by people who engage in aprocess of collective learning in ashared domain of human endeavour.’81 Practice communities can be large, small, and significantly overlapping; they can be institutionalized (for instance around philosophical schools) as well as loosely organized or institutionally interstitial (such as writers, artists, or mothers). Membership roles in such communities are based on the extent and forms of knowledgeable participation in the practice, and therefore represent potential modes of belonging which can play active or latent parts in one’sidentification.82 In essence, acommunity of practice is relationally formed through ‘away of doing’. How people develop away of doing is facilitated by ashared repertoire of tools: sources of how -to -knowledge (such as objects, styles, techniques) for practitioners to do what they do.83 Knowledgeability– engaging with the tool box– is socially generated through peer -to- -peer interaction (for instance, from more experienced sculptors to beginning sculptors), in which the peers are defined by their competence as practitioners, not by ethnic, cultural, or geographic origins. All communities of practice can be seen as constellations of practice or networks of knowledge in motion which do not necessarily require identity consciousness (community awareness) unless it is activated or called upon.84 Thus, by focusing on translocal practices and potential identifications in and across awide range of practice communities and membership roles (which can transcend physical and proximate space), the concept of communities of practice offers away of thinking and speaking about translocal, lived experience beyond etically homogenized collectivities. Methodologically, such an approach profoundly undermines meta -geographical cultural blocs of Eastern, Western, and everything hybrid or syncretistic that falls in between, in favour of amore emplaced, translocal perspective. TEMPLES AS PLACES OF INTERSECTING COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE How does such atranslocal perspective translate to archaeological material? Practice communities shift the attention from the search for original provenances of cultural behaviour, to the relational production, transformation, and articulation of identities within and across geographical space. Communities of practice can converge on the same location, which 79 Lave 1991, 67; Lave– Wenger 1991, 51, emphasis added. As such, the theory of communities of practice takes issue with the structure -agency nexus and is caught in the middle of theories of social structure and theories of situated experience (Wenger 1999, 12–13). 80 Lave– Wenger 1991, 97–98. 81 Wenger -Trayner– Wenger -Trayner 2015, 1. Wenger (et al. 2002, 27–29) explains that communities of practice are characterized by three basic components: adomain of interest (the domain of knowledge), acommunity of people (interacting practitioners), and ashared practice (the repertoire of knowledge, ideas, tools, styles, language, objects etc. that is developed, negotiated, and maintained to effectively deal with the domain). In his earlier work, Wenger (1999, 73) phrased these characteristics as amutual engagement, ajoint enterprise, and ashared repertoire. 82 Wenger 1999, 143–188. 83 Wenger 1999, 83. 84 Farnsworthetal. 2016, 142; Poddick– Stahl 2016, 4. 141MILINDA HOO means that we should take into account that behind the material remains of asingle temple site, there can be avariety of communities of practice in which members were tied together through their learning of, and engagement in aparticular ‘way of doing’ (Fig. 4). Accordingly, it should be considered that both the Oxus Temple and the Niched Temple embodied singular places of diverse activities for various intersecting communities of practice involving the workmanship, craftsmanship, and physical production of the respective material cultures; for instance, commissioners and architects of the temple, skilled construction workers, as well as the artisans and craftsmen of ritual and votive objects. Many of these likely worked on commission and their level of skilled practice was probably for the most time more important than their ethnic background. Additionally, there were also communities of practice related to the users and consumers of that material, such as dedicators or gift -givers who dedicated the votive objects, priests and cultic personnel who accepted and stored the dedications on behalf of the deity, and practitioners who engaged in specific cultic rites. Individual users may have played out multiple roles across such ‘consumer communities’: priests and cultic personnel who accepted and stored the dedications on behalf of the god(s) may also have been concerned with the material and immaterial ways in which cultic rites were executed, for instance those related to the recycling of the votives in the bronze casting workshop in the courtyard of the Oxus Temple. Vice versa, craftsmen of votive objects may not have been the same as those offering it; was it truly Atrosokes who wrote his name on the votive altar, or did he ask someone literate and educated to do it for him? The analytical distinction between practitioners engaged in the physical production of the temples and the votives on the one hand, and practitioners engaged in the consumption of the cultic offerings on the other is important for the realization that various synchronous as well as diachronous communities of practice were at play in asingle temple site. It should be emphasized that there could be significant overlap as well as mutual dependencies between such communities of practice of makers and users (Fig. 4). Artisans involved in the crafting of objects may also have been the ones dedicating those objects themselves (Atrosokes may well have been literate), while practitioners who devoted gifts to the temple deity (or deities) probably included construction workers, too. Moreover, how the temple was built by skilled workers most likely depended on who commissioned the building– the patron and the person (or family or institution) in power to decide on its architectural and practical design (who may Fig. 4: Scheme of possible overlap of practitioners in converging communities of practice. 142 STUDIA HERCYNIA XXVII/1 all have been one and the same, e.g. the ruling king or a member of the elite)– but also on the constituency envisioned in the commission of the building: its consuming ‘customers’. The actual construction process of the temple would equally be contingent upon the systematic skills, technical knowledge, and practical ways of doing known and learned by the construction workers. These overlapping aspects, however, should not be seen as fixed one -on -one relations, immovable in their membership roles. The artisans who crafted the objects may have sold them to the actual dedicators, who then offered them as avotive gifts to the god(s), with or without mediation by apriest or other temple personnel. Thinking translocally opens up numerous possibilities in favour of amore nuanced picture of the actors involved within the sphere of activity of asingle temple site. Membership in acommunity of practice can be, but is neither necessarily aconscious membership nor necessarily materially salient in archaeological remains. Oftentimes, ‘culture is quite ordinary’, which implies that the signification of some practices in terms of identity meaning can be latent, internalized, or even absent, through which material change can mask continuity and vice versa.85 People who engaged in cultic practices at Ai Khanoum and Takht-i Sangin could be dedicators and priests. New dedicators, such as first -time travellers, foreign ambassadors, or passers -by, were probably habitual practitioners in the wider general practice of offering votives to atemple, but most likely beginning practitioners in the cult practices specific to the Oxus Temple or the Niched Temple. As beginners on novel grounds, they may have been more aware about their way of doing in these particular sanctuaries. Other, more learned dedicators, such as those living in the vicinity, may have been more habitual practitioners and therefore less conscious about their actions. In relation to both learned practitioners who offered votives habitually, and peripheral practitioners who dedicated gifts in the manner in which they were told to do so (or how they thought would have been the correct way), priests and cultic personnel were, by definition, more learned practitioners in the distinct rites of the temple. Members of acommunity of practice not only converge on one location, are physically proximate, or spatially connected to one another, but can also be geographically distributed. Ways of doing could also be shared across distances, which could materially result in visual or technical similarities. Acomparison of the similarities and differences between the Oxus Temple at Takht -iSangin and the Niched Temple at Ai Khanoum in terms of architecture, ritual objects, and votives, may illuminate the extent and complexity of potential overlapping communities of practices at both sites (Fig. 5). The similarities in architecture between the two temples– the use of similar mud bricks, their thick walls, and their ground plan– may indicate distributed communities of practice of architects and temple builders, who formed aconstellation of practice (adistinct way of doing) with peer practitioners elsewhere, such as the temples at Dil’berdzhin in Bactria, or at Dura Europos in Syria. Contingent on the perceived identity of the deity, the Oxus Temple and the Niched Temple may also have shared acommunity of practice of worshippers of the same god(s), whose associations formed the cultural competence of material expressions or appropriate gifts in the form of ivory figurines, schist vessels, and female representations (which perhaps were intentionally ambiguous and multi -interpretational), as well as the cultural competence of using stone pedestals and water -related objects for cultic purposes, present at both sites. At the same time, the dissimilarities in size and architectural spaces, as well as in the suggested ritual practices– the vessels for libations in the case of the Niched Temple, and the bronze cauldrons for recycling votives in the courtyard of the Oxus 85 The famous phrase ‘culture is ordinary’ comes from Raymond Williams (Williams 1958) who emphasized lived, open -ended culture, as experienced in the minds and everyday life of people. 143MILINDA HOO Temple– may indicate different communities of consumer practice of dedicators and priests, who engaged in distinct cult practices suitable for the respective temple and deity. The spatial stretch of similarities in material ‘ways of doing’ signifies that communities of consumer practices and communities of producer practices may not have been geographically constrained, but that they possibly formed transregional dimensions of local social life in Hellenistic Bactria. This is not to say that the specific intersection of such consumer and producer practices necessarily shared the same meaning as well. Shared ways of doing do not equal or imply shared ways of being. Practices that are known to have occurred in Greece involving astone basin or the recycling and storage of votives which scholars have identified as Greek (on the basis of the principle of ouk ekphora), may not have had the same meaning or required the same ethnic or cultural identity of practitioners elsewhere, for instance in Bactria. Methodologically, the idea of distributed and converging communities of practice illuminates the pitfalls of analytically determining whether this or that feature of an object or practice should be defined as Eastern, Western, or hybrid. Ultimately, these etic labels may all have been entangled and intersected by varieties of translocal constellations and communities of practice on the ground. CONCLUDING REMARKS This paper was not intended to offer an exhaustive theoretical framework, but to critically reflect on the underlying tenets of common theoretical premises upon which scholars make sense of cultural mixture, as well as an attempt to open vistas for new research directions away from persistent binary traditions. Iargued that the concept of communities of practice offers aproductive point of entry into broader theorization of translocalism, which forms amore inclusive way to approach Bactria’scultural ‘inbetweenness’. Thinking on the level of practices around which people organize various intersectional identifications, communities of practice provide auseful perspective to see past the cultural melting pot and break down larger categorizations of Eastern, Western, and the syncretic hybrid. Instead of couching interpretations in discrete apriori identities, this perspective directs attention to networked practices which are not always obvious, yet quite straightforward in terms of how people interact socially. This is not to say that the Greek and Bactrian identities that scholars search for Fig. 5: Comparative table of the Oxus Temple and the Niched Temple. Hoo 2022, tab.9.1, based on Francfort 2012. 144 STUDIA HERCYNIA XXVII/1 did not exist at all, but it reminds us of more numerous possibilities of practice communities which may synchronously and diachronously have intersected in asingular bodily entity of atemple (or any other building). People participate and engage in actions and interactions, organically forming communities of practice on various levels and contexts that cut across ethnicities, coexist in location and across distances, and have therefore multiple entries for conscious identification, depending on activating circumstances. Taking up atranslocal approach therefore forces us to ask questions about whose story we narrate (and whose stories may be overwritten) when we make statements about people and communities behind religious architecture and objects. While communities of practice yield cognitive insights into the range of potential social configurations and identities, it is not an exhaustive theory. Even with more written testimonies of how and why people acted and felt, we can only infer bits and pieces of the full range and content of communities of practice from the material at hand. Moreover, practices, practical competence, and knowledgeability can be informed, shaped, as well as hindered by various power relations both between rulers and ruled as well as lower-lovel power dynamics within families and social classes, such as priests and elites. Communities of practice should therefore be combined with theories of competence in order to incorporate questions of power and ideology as well. 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