Sarasm

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Two of the five covered excavation areas: Area XII (center) and Area XIII to the west. In the background the village of Sohibnazar.

Sarasm ( Tajik Саразм ) another romanization Sarazm ("where the land begins"), was a Chalcolithic - Early Bronze Age , proto-urban settlement (about 3500 BC to 2000 BC) in southern Central Asia , whose continuous existence over one For a long time it was based on cattle breeding, the development of an agriculture and later on the extraction of mineral resources for metal processing. Sarasm was founded by colonists from Namazgadepe and neighboring oases in southern Turkmenistan near the Iranian border. Initially, the importance of the place was in the exchange of goods between a sedentary and a nomadic population in the surrounding area. In the Early Bronze Age, from the turn of the 4th to the 3rd millennium BC BC, Sarasm acted as a link in a network of trade relationships that reached into the Indus Valley . The two oldest of the tin deposits required for the production of bronze in Central Asia were located near Sarasm and provided the basis for long-distance trading in metals. With a recognized area of ​​35 hectares and an estimated area of ​​100 hectares, Sarasm was the largest settlement of an early agricultural culture in Central Asia at a time when the advanced civilizations were emerging in Egypt and Mesopotamia .

The site is located in today's Sughd province in northwest Tajikistan, west of Punjakent . It was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 2010 as the first archaeological site in Tajikistan .

location

Coordinates: 39 ° 30 ′ 28.4 "  N , 67 ° 27 ′ 31.4"  E

Map: Tajikistan
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Sarasm​
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Tajikistan

Sarasm is located 15 kilometers west of the town of Punjakent on the left, southern bank of the Serafshan , which here leaves the valley running in east-west direction between the Serafshan chain in the south and the Turkestan chain in the north and flows to the wide, flat irrigation oasis of Samarkand in Uzbekistan . The distance to the Uzbek border is ten kilometers and to Samarkand almost 50 kilometers. The place name also stands for the sub- district ( dschamoat ) Sarasm within the district ( nohija ) Pandschakent.

The excavation site can be reached from the A377 highway towards the Uzbek border via a 500-meter drive north and can be recognized from afar by the large roofs made of a steel tube construction covered with corrugated iron, which protect five areas of the excavations prepared for visitors. Between the road and the excavation site there are small plots of wheat fields, the other sides are framed by two of the villages, which are lined up on the river bank at intervals of half a kilometer to one kilometer downstream from Punjakent. The neighboring village of Avazali to the east has around 500 inhabitants, the neighboring village of Sohibnazar in the west around 1250 inhabitants. In the irrigated fields between the villages and the broad and sluggishly flowing Serafshan, rice is mainly grown, along with maize and vegetables. The fields are irrigated via canals from the river, in some places with the help of pumps or small water wheels.

The location at the border area between the mountains, the peaks of which reach heights between 3000 and 4500 meters, and the valley level near Sarasm which is around 900 meters high, made the place a trading center for nomadic shepherds from the mountains in addition to its agricultural production. The area around Sarasm offered good alluvial soils for farming in the plains, pastureland on the mountain slopes and hunting grounds in the tugai vegetation along the river. Wild boars, onagers , gazelles , bison and Siberian tigers lived in the dense Tugai forests and swamps on the Serafshan . A sophisticated irrigation system existed. A one-kilometer canal was supposed to protect the fields from periodic flooding, and a narrow irrigation canal ( arik in Central Asia ) supplied the northern part of the higher fields with water. A 16-meter-wide canal that must have been 1.5 meters deep at the time was archaeologically examined.

For the exchange of goods over long distances, there were connections along the Serafshan to the west into the plains of Turkmenistan and the Aral Sea . The route to the west coincided with the trade route from Ustruschana (area in the western Ferghana Valley) north of the Turkestan chain. To the north, another route led upstream along the Serafshan to Aini and from there over the 3,500 meter high Schahriston Pass into the western Ferghana Valley. The Shahriston Pass represented the most direct connection between northern Central Asia and India. Roads led southeast from Sarasm over the highlands of Balochistan to the Indus Valley in northwest India, further into the northeast Asian steppe regions and in a southwest direction to Mesopotamia . The mountain passes were accessible in the summer months. The exchange of goods with the distant regions, which mainly included the export of metal goods, probably took place through intermediaries.

One of the tin and copper deposits required for the production of bronze was in Muschiston, 35 kilometers south of Punjakent at an altitude of 3000 meters, and another tin depot at almost 500 meters on the lower reaches of the Serafshan in Karnab, which is now halfway between Samarqand and Bukhara located in Uzbekistan. There was between about 1700 and 800 BC. Ore mined. Since tin is lacking in Mesopotamia , it could be as early as the 3rd millennium BC. According to popular belief, the tin deposits on the Serafshan are out of the question as a source for the tin used in Mesopotamia, because no tin was mined on the Serafshan during this time. It is considered likely that at the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC Tin reached Mesopotamia, Syria (clay tablet archive from Mari ) and Anatolia (cuneiform tablets from Kültepe ) from the Serafshan .

Historical environment

Area IX to the east

In Tajikistan, several isolated finds south of Istaravshan and south of Dushanbe have been assigned to the Middle Paleolithic , other finds from the area around Punjakent and from southwestern Tajikistan belong to the Upper Paleolithic . Before the discovery of Sarasm in 1976, Tajikistan sites from the Bronze Age in the Berg-Badachschan region , also around the Kairakkum reservoir in the north and on the Kofarnihon River near Schahritus in the southwest were known.

From the 6th to the 4th millennium, the Kelteminar culture was widespread in a large part of southern Central Asia . People hunted, caught fish and collected wild plants, their tools mainly made of flint and bones.

Jeitun in the Karakum sand desert in southern Turkmenistan, 30 kilometers northwest of Ashgabat, is the oldest known place of an arable culture in Central Asia . The Neolithic finds (including ceramics) of the small Tepe of Jeitun on the northern edge of the Kopet-Dag from 6/5. Millennium BC BC document the change from a nomadic hunter-gatherer culture to agriculture and domestic animal husbandry. The subsequent Monjukli period is called proto-Chalcolithic and is named after the site of Monjukli Depe , which was located in the vicinity of the villages of Chakmakli and Chagylly, southeast of Ashgabat, which existed at the same time. A later stage of development, the Copper Age at the transition to the Bronze Age in the 5th and the beginning of the 4th millennium BC. BC, is marked by a population increase on Kopet-Dag. It includes Namazgadepe and Kara-Depe southeast of Ashgabat and the Geoksjur oasis at the mouth of the Tejen River in southeastern Turkmenistan. These places on the north edge of the Iranian highlands formed a series of oases with bronze temporal agriculture settlements in an area in research as Bactrian-Margiana Archäologischer complex ( Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex is known BMAC). The heyday of this "oasis culture" (also called Oxus culture) lasted from the end of the 3rd millennium BC. BC to the 18th century BC It is unclear why the decline took place after that. One of the few, after 1700 BC. Jarqoʻton was still populated places in the area . The Bactrian mountainous country further south in today's Afghanistan , on the other hand, has been around since the 2nd millennium BC at the earliest. Inhabited. Before the Bronze Age, people were probably not technically able to use the raging mountain rivers there to irrigate the fields. Dzharkutan creates a temporal bridge between the Turkmen oasis culture and the southern Tajik and northern Afghan cultures of the Bronze Age.

Area XII. In the middle one of several round fireplaces in this area, which have been laid out outside the living area since phase III.

The arable Copper Age societies of the Kopet-Dag area stood at the end of the 4th and beginning of the 3rd millennium BC. In a cultural connection with other groups in a wide area from Iran via Afghanistan to northwest India. During this time (Namazga-I-II period) the groups from Kopet-Dag were spreading eastwards: from their starting point, the Geoksjur oasis, to small settlements scattered across the Murgab inland delta to Sarasm, where one new, sophisticated culture emerged. A ceramic painted polychrome with cross-shaped and semi-cross-shaped ornaments appears in Geoksjur and identically in Sarasm. Furthermore, a snail bracelet, which was found in a grave of Sarasm, establishes a connection to Baluchistan with similar bracelets, which however do not occur in southern Turkmenistan. Ornate ceramics made with a potter's wheel, which first appeared in Balochistan and a little later in Sarasm, also refer to a cultural relationship between Balochistan and Central Asia. Almost a third of the known ceramics from the oldest layers of Schahr-e Suchte in Sistan are of the same type as those further north in Turkmenistan. According to this, some of the original inhabitants of this place could have immigrated from the area around Geoksjur. Sitting and standing doll-like clay figurines date back to around 3000 BC from Mehrgarh in Balochistan , Pakistan . And are also known from Sarasm at the same time.

Although Sarasm-type pot shards were also found in the area of ​​the Afanassjewo culture, which is widespread in the far north, in southern Siberia (mid-4th to mid-3rd millennium BC), this connection is - until further similarities become known - as unsecured . With regard to a possible exchange with the steppe nomads of Siberia, Sarasm is considered to be the northernmost trading post of the Central Asian civilization.

Towards the end of the 3rd millennium, the long-standing settlements in southern Turkmenistan were abandoned. In their place there were apparently planned and fortified settlements with an urban character, whose material culture is categorized as the so-called " Bactrian Bronze Age".

Sarasm is an example of a radical cultural transition. In the second half of the 4th millennium, the farming residents of Sarasm attracted nomadic hunters and fishermen in their surroundings. A millennium later, these groups had changed their economy and started keeping pets. Objects made of bronze and silver made their way from Namazgadepe to the Fergana Valley in the north around this time . Central within this area at the end of the 3rd and beginning of the 2nd millennium BC Existing Zaman Baba culture embodies the result of cultural change. It is named after the lake of the same name west of Bukhara , where many small canals and lakes made irrigation farming possible.

settlement

Area XI to the west. Behind areas XII and XIII.
Place of worship in area XI. Central room with a round fire altar on which burnt offerings took place. Surrounded by a corridor.

According to various estimates, the settlement area had an area of ​​around 90 hectares, 100 hectares, or 100–150 hectares. About 35 hectares of it were recognizable. Even if the settlement area had not extended beyond the visible 35 hectares, Sarasm would have been the largest proto-urban settlement in south-central Asia. Gonur Depe , the capital of the Margiana area in southern Turkmenistan, was 22 hectares in size. A total area of ​​2.5 hectares was uncovered in 13 locations. All layers were just below the surface, the shallow stratigraphic depth, which was nowhere more than two meters, is explained by soil erosion during intermediate phases when the settlement was abandoned. The remains of the settlement were largely unscathed except for a few irrigation channels that ran through the fields that had been laid out on the site since the 1950s. Before that, the archaeological site at an altitude of 910 meters - around ten meters higher than the fields further north - was undeveloped. The layer of earth that was reworked for agriculture was only 20 centimeters thick. The first chance finds came to light in this layer. Five of the excavation areas, Areas V, IX, XI, XII and XIII, were prepared for visitors and roofed over to protect them from the weather.

The place was discovered by chance in 1976 by a resident of the village of Avazali, who fell into his hands with a bronze ax while plowing a new field. In 1977, Tajik researchers began a test excavation, two years later with systematic excavations. From 1984 onwards, French and American archaeologists also took part in the excavations. Some of the finds come from villagers who gave them to the excavation team. From 1977 to 1994 the excavations were under the direction of Abdullojon Isakov, eleven area excavations were carried out and 20 exploratory trenches were dug. From 1984 to 1991 a French team under Roland Besenval undertook excavations in the 16 × 20 meter area VII. In 1985 the Americans CC Lamberg-Karlovsky and Philip L. Kohl joined them. The Sarasm archaeological reserve was created in 2000 and was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2010. From 2002 to 2005, smaller excavations took place, which were refilled after completion.

The proto-urban settlement was founded at the beginning of the 4th millennium BC. Founded in BC, possibly on the site of an older Stone Age residence. According to the radiocarbon method , the chronological division into the phases Sarasm I (3500–3200 BC), Sarasm II (3200–2900 BC), Sarasm III (2900–2700 BC) and Sarasm IV (2700 BC) takes place -2400 BC). In 2008, Abdurauf Razzokov laid the four settlement periods a little later with Sarasm I (3500–2900 BC), Sarasm II (2900–2600 BC), Sarasm III (2600–2300 BC) and Sarasm IV (2300 –2000 BC). Most of the visible residues originate from phases II and III.

The preserved building structures belonged to houses, workshops, storage rooms for grain as well as to palace and cult buildings. In phase II all types of buildings occurred. The walls consisted of adobe bricks that were plastered with clay and painted, only in the youngest layer of settlement some foundations were made with stones from the river. The roofs were constructed flat from a layer of beams, which was covered with reeds and twigs and sealed with a layer of clay.

In all four phases there were residential buildings with several rooms, which served as living area, storage room and kitchen. Most had a walled courtyard. Narrow or wider alleys led between the houses, and open spaces were provided as standing places for the cattle. In phase II there were small, round cult sites with fireplaces in the residential buildings. In phase III, these ritual sites became larger; in addition to round, square fire sanctuaries were sometimes available. In areas IV and IX they were outside the houses. The fireplaces were probably also used in everyday life. The different building sizes point to approaches of social differentiation and the places of worship reveal a veneration of sun and fire.

A 128 square meter building with an obviously religious function was uncovered in Area IV, which consisted of four rooms, two of which had a square place of worship. A 16 × 16.5 meter building with six rooms of different sizes in Areal is interpreted as a palace. In Area III a public building appeared on a 15 × 15 meter large and 0.7 meter high platform, which consisted of eight rectangular rooms in two rows in the middle. These were flanked by two corridors on the west and east sides. The interior rooms are interpreted as living or administrative areas and the corridors as granaries.

In the second layer of Area V, a circular structure made up of two rings with an outer ring diameter of 7.7 meters and an inner ring diameter of 4.25 meters was found. The dimensions of the adobe bricks were 52 × 25 × 10–11 centimeters. A corridor 75 centimeters wide remained free between the two rings. Abdullojon Isakov considers the structure to be a symbol of the sun . In the third layer, the rings were destroyed and in their place stood a 5 × 7 meter cult building with a round fire altar in the middle. A similar temple was located in the third layer in Area XI. Its central room was surrounded by a corridor where burnt offerings took place. Bones on the southwest corner come from a sacrificed Caucasian goat. At some sanctuaries, remains of paintings showing a Maltese cross have been preserved around the altar . Phase III with monumental buildings was followed by phase IV, in which the settlement began to gradually shrink.

Finds

Shards of pottery, bones and spearheads made of bronze in the National Archaeological Museum in Dushanbe .

The excavations so far have not uncovered any major necropolis , only a grave was discovered in Area IV, which was enclosed by a stone wall 15 meters in diameter. Those buried in a crouching position to the side with their faces facing east were a 19 to 20-year-old woman, a 20 to 21-year-old man and a girl, and four other people a little further away. Several thousand pearls made of lapis lazuli , soapstone , carnelian , turquoise and silver were among the rich grave goods surrounding the woman . Another 49 gold beads adorned her hair and snail bracelets on her wrists. The snails of the species real pear snail ( Turbinella pyrum ) are evidence of trade relations with India, where they have been since the 4th millennium BC. Are known. Large specimens are blown as snail horns in religious rituals in India and Tibet .

Another find that confirms long-distance trade relations to the south is a single Proto- Elamite , cylindrical cylinder seal from Area IV with a picture of a bull, as it was found in arable crops from Mesopotamia via the Iranian highlands to India. The minerals used for the pearls have their origin in Afghanistan and partly in Northern Asia. End of the 3rd millennium BC In BC Sarasm became a center for processing and exporting tin and bronze. In areas II, IV, V and VI, remains of walls from forge furnaces, remains of casting molds and waste slag were found. The methods of copper processing in Layer III were similar to those from Mesopotamia to the Indus Valley. Copper processing and other material culture were also associated with the Tugai excavation site several kilometers downstream on the Serafshan in Uzbekistan. With the Tugai excavated in 1992, Bertille Lyonnet and Abdullojon Isakov (1996) recognized similarities with the Andronowo culture . Other crafts in Sarasm were pottery, stone processing, jewelry making and textile processing.

Two round clay kilns were uncovered in areas II and VI (phases II and III). The floor of a 2.4 × 1.9 meter kiln was covered with a thick layer of gray stone dust under the ash, which was used as an admixture to the clay. Sarasm ceramics are divided into two groups: The monochrome ceramics from Phase I are decorated with dark brown patterns on a lighter background. The polychrome ceramic from phase II has dark brown and dark reddish patterns on a red and light yellow engobed background. This group is comparable to the finds from Namazgadepe (Namazga IV). Some triangular shapes correspond to finds from later layers of Geoksyur and Kara-depe. In phase IV a gray ceramic is added, as it is known from Tepe Hissar in Iran in period IIIA (temporally imprecise) and early IIIB (around 2400–2170). The gemstones can also be compared with those from sites in southern Turkmenistan.

literature

  • AI Isakov: Sarazm: An Agricultural Center of Ancient Sogdiana. In: Bulletin of the Asia Institute, New Series, Vol. 8 (The Archeology and Art of Central Asia Studies From the Former Soviet Union) 1994, pp. 1-12
  • Bertille Lyonnet: Sarazm (Tadjikistan): Céramiques (Chalcolithique et Bronze Ancien). (Memoires de la Mission Archeologique Francaise en Asie Centrale, VII) De Boccard, Paris 1996
  • Robert N. Spengler, George Willcox: Archaeobotanical results from Sarazm, Tajikistan, an Early Bronze Age Settlement on the edge: Agriculture and exchange. In: Journal of Environmental Archeology. Volume 18, No. 3, 2013, pp. 211-22

Web links

Commons : Sarasm  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Avazali . ( Memento from November 29, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Tajikistan Water Supply & Sanitation Network
  2. ^ David W. Anthony: How Bronze Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World. Princeton University Press, Princeton / Oxford 2007, p. 388
  3. ↑ Mushiston . Mineral atlas
  4. ↑ Karnab . Mineral atlas
  5. ↑ Jan Cierny: The old Orient and the tin bronze. Archeology Online, March 1, 2001
  6. ^ Kai Kaniuth: The Metallurgy of the Late Bronze Age Sapalli Culture (Sputhern Uzbekistan) and its Implikations for the Tin Question. In: Iranica Antiqua. Volume 52, 2007, pp. 23-40, here p. 34
  7. ↑ Abdurauf Razzokov: Nomination to the World Heritage List of Sarazm, 2008 , p. 4
  8. ^ Grégoire Frumkin: Archeology in Soviet Central Asia. ( Handbook of Oriental Studies, 7th section: Art and Archeology, 3rd volume: Innerasien, 1st section) EJ Brill, Leiden / Cologne 1970, pp. 58, 61
  9. ↑ Viktor Sarianidi : Food producing and other Neolithic communities in Khorasan and Transoxania: eastern Iran, Soviet Central Asia and Afghanistan. In: AH Dani, VM Masson (ed.): History of civilizations of Central Asia. Volume 1 .: The dawn of civilization: earliest times to 700 BC UNESCO Publishing, Paris 1992, pp. 121f
  10. ^ George F. Dales: Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan. In: Machteld J. Mellink, Jan Filip: Early stages of art. ( Propylaen Art History , Volume 14) Propylaen, Berlin 1985, p. 168
  11. ↑ Aleksandr Belenickij: Central Asia. (Archaeologia Mundi. The great cultures of the world) Heyne, Munich 1978, pp. 38–41
  12. ↑ Viktor Sarianidi: The Art of Ancient Afghanistan. EA Seemann, Leipzig 1986, p. 44
  13. ^ VM Masson: The Bronze Age in Khorasan and Transoxania. In: AH Dani, VM Masson (ed.): History of civilizations of Central Asia. Volume 1 .: The dawn of civilization: earliest times to 700 BC UNESCO Publishing, Paris 1992, pp. 229, 232f
  14. ↑ Catherine Jarrige: The figurines of the first farmers at Mehrgarh and Their offshoots . Paper presented in the International seminar on the "First Farmers in Global Perspective". Lucknow (India) January 18-20, 2006, pp. 155–166, here p. 162
  15. ↑ Michael Frachetti: Bronze Age Exploitation and Political Dynamics of the Eastern Eurasian Steppe Zone . ( Memento from November 29, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) In: Katie Boyle, Colin Renfrew, Marsha Levine (Eds.): Ancient interactions: east and west in Eurasia. McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, Cambridge 2002, p. 164
  16. ^ David W. Anthony: How Bronze Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World. Princeton University Press, Princeton / Oxford 2007, p. 393
  17. ^ Philip L. Kohl: The Northern "Frontier" of the Ancient Near East: Transcaucasia and Central Asia Compared. In: American Journal of Archeology, Vol. 92, No. 4, October 1988, pp. 591-596, here pp. 595f
  18. ^ VM Masson: The Bronze Age in Khorasan and Transoxania , p. 244
  19. ↑ a b c K. Baipakov: Prominent archaeological sites of Central Asia on the Great Silk Road. UNESCO Library, 2011, p. 50f (Chapter: Tajikistan , p. 49–69)
  20. ^ Robert N. Spengler, George Willcox: Archaeobotanical results from Sarazm, p. 213
  21. ^ Robert N. Spengler, George Willcox: Archaeobotanical results from Sarazm, p. 213
  22. ↑ Abdurauf Razzokov: Management Plan (2002-2006), pp. 20f
  23. ↑ Abdurauf Razzokov: Nomination to the World Heritage List of Sarazm, 2008, p 11
  24. ^ Robert N. Spengler, George Willcox: Archaeobotanical results from Sarazm, pp. 213f