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The Archaeology of Sogdiana

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The Archaeology of Sogdiana The Archaeology of Sogdiana Boris I. Marshak The Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg Sogdiana (or Sogd) is a region in Cen- ever, for a more complete picture we in Samarkand region and the Dashti tral Asia that was populated by need to note the monuments of earlier Kozy tomb to the east of Panjikent. Sogdians, people speaking and writing periods. These unrelated monuments do not in an Eastern Iranian language. Accord- help, however, to explain the origins ing to Greek and Roman authors, The most ancient archaeological find- of the Sogdians. Sogdiana included territories between ings on the territory of Sogdiana date two rivers, the Amu Darya and Syr to the Middle Paleolithic period. There Urban development in Sogdiana began Darya. Khoresm, which occupied the are a few Upper Paleolithic settlements sometime in the early first millennium Amu Darya delta, was not part of (in Samarkand, for example) as well; BCE, i.e., in the early Iron Age, when a Sogdiana. Later Sogdiana, beginning at the same time, nothing from the new culture emerged in Samarkand at least in the first and second centu- Neolithic period has yet been found. and Kashkadarya, Sogdiana ries CE, occupied a smaller territory. Sarasm, situated between Samarkand [Isamiddinov]. Some characteristic fea- Thus its southern border was no longer and Panjikent, is an Eneolithic monu- tures of this culture are more archaic along the Amu Darya but along the ment dated to the fourth and third mil- than those included in the Bactrian- Zeravshan mountain range. Ferghana lennia BCE. Abdullo Isakov and his stu- Margiana cultural circle or even those and Ustrushana, situated between dents, as well as Roland Besenval and of the more ancient culture of Sarasm. Chach (the Tashkent oasis), Ferghana Bertille Lyonnet, studied this monu- For example, so-called semi-huts ap- and Sogdiana, did not belong to ment which consists of several settle- peared in place of houses made of Sogdiana, although the inhabitants of ments that occupy hundreds of hect- unbaked brick and consisting of sev- Ustrushana wrote and, perhaps, spoke ares. Sarasm pottery combines char- eral rooms. Plain pottery, sometimes the Sogdian language. Big Tokharistan, acteristics of northern Iranian (Tepe decorated with simple painting, re- a successor of Bactria, was located Hissar), southern Turkmen (Geoksur), placed dishware found in sedentary south of the Zeravshan mountain southern Afghan (Mundigak), Khoresm settlements which was produced with range. It is not clear, however, whether (Keltiminar), and even southern Sibe- the use of a potter’s wheel. This pot- the Sogdians populated all the lands rian (Afanasiev) cultures. There are, tery is different from the Andronov which Greek and Roman authors at- perhaps, local types as well. Bezanval type. At the same time, the emergence tribute to Sogdiana. It is possible that attributes such “multiculturalism” of of Iranian-speaking tribes in the first these authors referred to administra- Sarasm to the resettlement of people millennium BCE, including the ances- tive boundaries of the Achaemenid from different lands to this area, at- tors of historical Sogdians in the re- Empire, ignoring population distribution tracted there by the mineral resources gions where the latter lived, is often in the area. According to archaeologi- of the upper reaches of the Zeravshan associated (although empirically un- cal convention, any monument located River. supported) with the arrival of Andronov in the lower Zeravshan and tribes. Kashkadarya River valleys (but not to The Bronze Age is not well studied. the south or north-east of this terri- However, we are aware of the If, indeed, these tribes that populated tory) is defined as Sogdian regardless Zamanbaba culture in the lower the steppe during the late Bronze Age of the date. I should note, however, Zeravshan Valley. Dated to the early invaded Sogdiana, they must have lost that prior to the first and second cen- Bronze period, this culture is close to their older pottery tradition by the time turies CE, in archaeological terms, the Afanasiev culture in Siberia. Also, of the invasion. The fact is that, about there is no difference between Sogdian a burial cave was discovered in the same time, in the beginning of the culture and cultures to the south of the Zardcha-Khalifa, a location near first millennium BCE, nomadic pasto- Zeravshan mountain range. This said, Panjikent, dated the beginning of the ralism had developed in the steppe, the in the present article, following the es- second millenium BCE. This cave is at- original area of the Andronov culture, tablished convention, Sogdiana de- tributed to the second phase of the replacing the old herding-agricultural notes the region including the Sappali culture, a variant of the Bac- type of economy. Nomadic pastoralists, Zeravshan and Kashkadarya River ba- trian-Margiana culture. The Andronov as ethnographic research has shown, sins. Clearly, the archaeology of steppe culture penetrates the do not make pottery. Most likely, it was Sogdiana is dated no earlier than the Zeravshan basin somewhat later, in the the invasion of the nomads that re- first millennium BCE, when Sogdians first half of the second millennium BCE, duced to practically nothing the emerged on the historical stage. How- as evidenced in the Muminabad tomb achievements of the Bactrian-Margiana 3 characteristic of Iranian culture) spread only in the fourth century BCE during the late Achaemenid and the early Hel- lenic periods. During the Hellenic pe- riod, semi-huts were built along with unbaked brick constructions. The Kurgancha settlement in southern Sogdiana, which was excavated by M. Khasanov, dated the fourth and the third centuries BCE, is characteristic of this trend. Neither Persian influence during the Achaemenid period nor Greek influence in the Hellenic epoch had an immedi- ate impact on the Sogdian culture. Greek forms in the Afrasiab pottery, in- cluding “fish plates” and kraters ap- peared in the third century BCE during the rule of the Seleucids, not right af- ter Alexander the Great’s conquest of Sogdiana in the 320s BCE. Nomads conquered Sogdiana in the end of the Copyright © 1979 Daniel C. Waugh C. 1979 Daniel © Copyright third century. Greeks may have re- The ruins of Panjikent turned to Sogdiana in the first half of the second century, but by mid-cen- culture, although it did not eliminate survived to some degree. tury, the nomads took it over again. old traditions completely. Some invad- Ancient oriental elements prevail in the ers settled on deserted and fertile lands A new stage in cultural development architecture of the Greek period. A typi- and took up agriculture. Mountain in Sogdiana began in the seventh and cal example is the Afrasiab city wall. people, always in need of additional the sixth centuries BCE. Its character- It was built from large unbaked bricks land, participated in this process as istics were found in Bactria, Margiana, of a type unknown in Greece on which well. Pottery has always been a typi- northern Parthia, and, somewhat later, were written the names of the makers cal product among them, right down in Khoresm as well. These characteris- in Greek letters. Unbaked brick con- to modern times [Peshchereva]. tics (for example, cylinder cone-shaped structions were typical of Sogdiana dur- pottery made with the use of the ing its whole history. The French-Uzbek In the eighth and seventh centuries potter’s wheel and the production of expedition excavated at the Afrasiab BCE, settlements with semi-huts were large, rectangular, unbaked brick) did citadel a large storehouse for grain that replaced by large cities, among them not spread beyond the territories in the belonged to the state or the temple. Kok-tepe (with an area of 100 hect- northeast of Sogdiana. It has been ar- This storehouse had been built in the ares; the name is the modern one) and gued that these lands were included in time of Greek rule and then was Samarkand (220 hectares; the ancient the same state in the seventh and the burned, most likely during the nomadic town was Afrasiab). The study of these sixth centuries. However, it is not clear conquest. sites by the Uzbek-French expedition yet what was this state’s major politi- demonstrates that the process of erect- cal and administrative center. Even be- Burial sites of the nomadic population ing city walls in Samarkand and Kok- fore this period, a new large urban cen- near oases date from first centuries tepe and shrines in Kok-tepe included ter, the remnants of which are now BCE to the first centuries CE. Artifacts large-scale works [Rapin, Isamiddinov called Er-kurgan, emerged in southern produced by sedentary masters, includ- and Khasanov]. According to Sogdiana. In 1950, Aleksei I. ing pottery made on the potter’s wheel, Isamiddinov’s reasonable hypothesis, Terenozhkin developed relative and were popular among pastoralists. Dur- irrigation canals in Samarkandian absolute systems of chronology of ing the period between about the late Sogdiana, the length of which was more Sogdian pottery and other specimens second and the first centuries and the than 100 km, were built at about the that were dated between the sixth cen- first and the second centuries CE, tall same time as the cities. With some tury BCE and the end of the eighth cen- goblets became a widespread item, and changes, these canals survived until the tury CE. Cultural change (as much as iron arrowheads replaced those made present. Three important factors facili- it can be assessed by archaeologists) of bronze. The urban culture of tated this socio-economic transforma- did not occur immediately after Bactria, Samarkand, Er-kurgan, and other cit- tion: rapid population growth on fer- Sogdiana, and Khoresm were con- ies and settlements dating from this tile land, military organization of a quered by Cyrus the Great and became period is well explored.
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