An essay on the ethnocultural history of the lower reaches of the Syr Darya in the second half of the I millennium BC: Settlements of the Chirikrabat culture
Utubayev Z.
30 March 2022Margulan Institute of Archaeology
Kazakhstan Archeology
2022#2022Issue 143 - 56 pp.
The article examines one of the main aspects of cultural genesis - the relationship between the cultures of settled farmers and pastoralists of the Eurasian steppes on the example of the monuments of material culture of the lower Syr Darya, the territory of which was one of the contact zones in Eurasia. The main attention in the publication is paid to the Chirikrabat archaeological culture, which was formed on the territory of the southwestern part of the ancient Syrdarya delta no later than the turn of the 4th-2nd centuries BC. This culture originated in this territory, of course, on a local basis, when the nomadic Saks, who inhabited the lower reaches of the Syr Darya in the second third of the I millennium BC, switched to a sedentary agricultural and cattle-breeding method of farming based on irrigation agriculture. In the area of distribution of the Chirikrabat archaeological culture there are ancient settlements and settlements of various sizes and layout, a brief description of which is given in the article. Based on a comparative analysis of all these monuments, the characteristic features of a particular type of settlement are determined, which gives grounds to objectively identify a certain hierarchy within the entire array of these objects, which can be traced even at the highest taxometric level. Analysis of the entire corpus of currently known artifacts suggests that in the second half of the I millennium BC. In the lower reaches of the Syr Darya, all the prerequisites are being created for the formation of a single interconnected centralized economic system with a developed handicraft production based on artificial irrigation.
Ancient settlement , Archaeology , Chirikrabat archaeological culture , Early Iron Age , Fortress , Mausoleum , Mound , Sword , Syrdarya , Tip
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Department of Archaeology of the Early Iron Age, Margulan Institute of Archaeology, Almaty, Kazakhstan
Department of Archaeology of the Early Iron Age
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