Urban Cultures of Central Asia from the Bronze Age to the ......Bronze and Iron Age Urbanisation in Turkmenistan 67 characteristic of mobile pastoralists and not of sed- entary agriculturalists

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Urban Cultures of Central Asia from the Bronze Age to the Karakhanids

Learnings and conclusions from new archaeological investigations and discoveries

Proceedings of the First International Congress on Central Asian Archaeology held at the University of Bern, 4–6 February 2016

Edited byChristoph Baumer and Mirko Novák

2019

Harrassowitz Verlag · Wiesbaden

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Bronze and Iron Age Urbanisation in Turkmenistan

Preliminary results from the excavation of Togolok 1 on the Murghab alluvial fan

Barbara Cerasetti, Roberto Arciero, Marialetizia Carra, Antonio Curci, Jacopo

De Grossi Mazzorin, Luca Forni, Elise Luneau, Lynne M. Rouse, Robert N.

Spengler III

Abstract: Despite the hostile climate, since the Bronze Age the populations of Southern Turkmen-istan have been able to create, through an impressive network of canals, an artificial agricultural territory with villages and large towns. Between 2400 and 1950 BCE, the Murghab alluvial fan was characterised by the presence of complex urban societies. This period was followed by a deep crisis that led to the disappearance of the largest sites. At the beginning of the Iron Age (1300 BCE), the wa-ter flow in the Murghab River decreased, resulting in a southward movement of settlements and the abandonment of a large portion of the territory by sedentary farmers. At the same time, new groups of mobile pastoralists began to settle in the area and started to interact with farmers. The excavations of Togolok 1 are providing vital data on the integration between sedentary and mobile pastoralist cultures, as well as on the birth and evolution of urbanism during the later Iron Age.

Keywords: Turkmenistan, Murghab River, Bronze Age, mobile pastoralism.

Резюме: Начиная с бронзового века, несмотря на неблагоприятный климат, жителям Южно-го Туркменистана с помощью впечатляющей сети каналов удалось сделать свои земли при-годными для сельского хозяйства и жизни в больших поселениях. В период между 2400 и 1950 гг. до н.э. дельта реки Муграб характеризуется присутствием сложных городских обществ. Кризис в конце этого периода привел к исчезновению самых больших поселений. Снижение уровня воды в реке Мургаб в начале Железного века (1300 г. до н.э.) привело к смещению по-селений на юг и исходу оседлых крестьян со значительной части упомянутых территорий. В то же время новые группы скотоводов-кочевников начали заселять данную территорию и вступили в контакт с крестьянами. Раскопки памятника Тоголок 1 предоставляют данные о взаимопроникновении оседлой и кочевнической культур, а также о зарождении и эволюции городов в период позднего железного века.

Ключевые слова: Туркменистан, река Мургаб, бронзовый век, кочевой образ жизни.



64 Barbara Cerasetti et al.

There are several interesting research questions being explored by archaeologists working in the Murghab alluvial fan region in what is now Southern Turkmenistan (Fig. 1).

One of the most interesting of these topics of in-quiry relates to the nature of mobility and interac-tion during the 3rd to the 1st millennia BCE, espe-cially in a context of increasing social complexity.

Much of this ongoing research centres around possible links between exchange and increasing social complexity, increasing central urbanisation during the period between the Middle-Late Bronze Age (2400–1300 BCE) and the following Iron Age 1 and 2 (1300–550 BCE), and the formation of a “state’” during historical periods (e.g., Hiebert 1994; Kohl 2007; Cerasetti 2012; Frachetti 2012; Rouse/Cerasetti 2014; Spengler 2015) (Fig. 2).

With these questions of inquiry in mind, we con-ducted a collaborative excavation at the Bronze Age (Namazga culture) village of Togolok 1, located in a central position in the north-eastern sector of the Murghab alluvial fan (Sarianidi 1990; Sarianidi 1994; Hiebert 1994; Salvatori 2006; Cerasetti 2016; Cerasetti et al. forthcoming a; Cerasetti et al. forthcoming b) (Fig. 3).

The data from these ongoing excavations is shed-ding light on the question of which changes took place in the politics and economy of the region during the transition period. The Togolok 1 excava-tion has focused, and will continue to focus, on the gap in our understanding of how the pastoral and agricultural peoples were interconnected, whether they were in close contact or had hostile relations, especially as they all lived in close proximity on the alluvial fan. In addition, the results from Togolok 1 are creating fertile ground for further inquiry into the process of urbanisation in the Murghab region.

The Bronze Age Murghab region was occupied by peoples who can be divided into two cultural and economic categories: sedentary farmers and mobile pastoralists. It is still not clear how these two groups interacted with one another in day-to-day activities, whether they saw themselves as one people, or how their economic ties played out. In order to further understand the process of urban growth and the development of cities in the Murghab, we have also conducted a series of excavations at nearby contem-poraneous sites that were occupied by mobile pas-toralists or small-scale agro-pastoralists. These sites provide a point of contrast with the larger sedentary urban sites and they are helping us to piece together the broader economic picture for this period. Such

Fig. 1: Distribution of Bronze Age archaeological sites (red diamond), excavated by the Italian-American-Turkmen mission, along the main fluvial ridges (basemap: CORONA KH-4A 1972 satellite mosaic); modern Murghab alluvial fan in the black

circle (basemap: Google Earth 2016) in the upright image (GIS elaboration by R. Arciero).



Bronze and Iron Age Urbanisation in Turkmenistan 65

semi-nomadic contexts, such as the short-term oc-cupation settlements of Ojakly (Cerasetti 2012; Rouse/Cerasetti 2014) and Chopantam (Cattani 2008; Cerasetti/Rouse/de Nigris 2018), were clearly part of a broader network of communication and exchange on the Murghab alluvial fan.

The mobile pastoralists who lived at these small seasonal sites had to deal with a very different set of ecological stressors and engaged in economic activ-ities that set them apart from their sedentary neigh-bours. These peoples adapted to their environment through a more intensive management of herds, as well as through sometimes supplementing the pas-toralist-dominant system with foraging, hunting, and possibly limited farming. Therefore, the broad-er question that we are seeking to answer through these excavations and through our multi-proxy ap-proach to the data are: How did this multi-faceted

economic and political system function? How did these populations with different cultural and eco-nomic contexts coexist?

Ethnographic analogies have been used to re-construct the economy of those who occupied these small-scale seasonal sites. While a direct compari-son between the modern and past economies in the region is not appropriate, it can be insightful; it is interesting to note, for example, that modern Turk-men pastoralists switch back and forth between economic strategies, sometimes spending part of a year as farmers and part as shepherds (Fig. 4).

As long as the often erratic climate of this region is favourable and the temperature remains more or less moderate, herds are still brought into the vast open pasturelands of the Karakum Desert. There was a similar process during the Bronze Age, when the now-desert area was an extensive floodplain

Fig. 2: Archaeological chronology of the Murghab alluvial fan (by L.M. Rouse).

Fig. 3: Bronze and Iron Age distribution along the main fluvial ridges, with the evidence of Bronze-Iron Age water system (basemap: CORONA KH-4A 1972 satellite mosaic) (GIS elaboration by R. Arciero).




(Cremaschi 1998; Cerasetti 2012). These inter-mingled economic systems include, and likely in-cluded in the past, planned rotations between pas-toral and cultivation chores. There are myriad ways in which these economic systems could have func-tioned, but many scholars have polarised the situa-tion, creating a narrative that suggests that the two populations maintained either specialised herding or farming economies. The reality of the situation was probably much more complex and more inte-grated, and we believe that many parallels between past and present are possible.

Our team’s investigation of the sedentary site of Togolok 1 has helped to clarify just how intensive the degree of integration between the farmers and pastoralists was and how this process transformed the dietary economy (Cerasetti et al. forthcom-ing a). Interestingly, both of these populations preserved their cultural identity, and appear to be

distinct populations in the archaeological record, a fact that has led scholars to the conclusion that they had very distinct economic systems, even in spite of clear exchanges and integrations visible in the ar-chaeological evidence. We would argue instead that the development of urban centres and the eventual formation of a “state” in the historical periods that would follow were the logical consequence of the exchange of goods and ideas between these two cul-tures.

Our two seasons of excavation at Togolok 1 (Sep-tember to October in 2014 and 2015) focused on the later levels, leaving deeper earlier layers for further investigation. These later excavation lay-ers at Togolok 1 date to the late 3rd and early 2nd millennium BCE, and appear to represent mobile pastoralist occupation on top of what was already an abandoned urban centre. The material culture from these layers is dominated by artefacts that are

Fig. 4: Modern Turkmens engaged in their daily tasks (photos: a. by S. De Boeck 2015, b. by R.N. Spengler 2010).




characteristic of mobile pastoralists and not of sed-entary agriculturalists. Therefore, we have argued that the large urban village of Togolok 1 was largely abandoned by its farming population around this time, probably because of the desertification of the region (Fig. 5).

This hypothesis is mainly based on the presence of a layer of abandonment of about 20 cm, primarily consisting of sandy sediments, which separated the pastoralist phase from the earlier occupation (see Forni in Cerasetti et al. forthcoming a).

Thanks to new radiocarbon dates obtained from material from the two Bronze Age sedentary sites of Adji Kui 1 and Togolok 1, we can finally date the presence of mobile pastoralists in sedentary con-texts from the Middle (2400–1950 BCE) to Late/Fi-nal Bronze Ages (1950–1300 BCE; Spengler et al. 2016; see Cerasetti and Rouse in Cerasetti et al. forthcoming a). While the urban centre of Togolok 1 was occupied from the Middle Bronze Age, we are focusing here on the last period of the site’s occupa-tion, when groups of semi-nomadic pastoralists sea-sonally camped on the site after the abandonment of the village, or at least in a final farming stage of the settlement. Our excavation team investigated three different phases of this late occupation at To-golok 1, with material culture from each of these lay-ers suggesting that even as these mobile pastoral-ists became more physically integrated into farming communities in the alluvial fan, and possibly took up aspects of agricultural production, they maintained clear aspects of their pastoralist lifestyle and econ-omy. The traditional dichotomy imagined between

farmers and pastoralists is therefore not seen in the archaeological record of the site; instead, the palimpsest of layers represents a range of diverse practices and economic strategies that changed over time. As excavations progress at Togolok 1, we aim to understand how and when occupation of the site by pastoralists and farmers overlapped, and how their practices shifted through contact with one another. We suggest that it is these changing rela-tionships and practices are what shaped the Bronze Age in the Murghab, and had a direct impact on the development of local cultures into the Iron Age (see Cerasetti and Rouse in Cerasetti et al. forthcom-ing a).

Furthermore, the archaeological layers so far excavated at Togolok 1 testify to the process of ex-change between mobile pastoralists and sedentary farmers in the Murghab, in that material cultural traits that are often thought of as characteristic of one group or the other, were found together. For ex-ample, wheel-shaped pottery (farmers) was found in association with handmade forms (pastoralists) (see Forni/Luneau in Cerasetti et al. forthcoming a), and the remains of pig and cow (farmers) were found with those of sheep and goat (pastoralists) (see Curci and De Grossi Mazzorin in Cerasetti et al. forthcoming a). Taken together, this mingling of traits paints a picture of a semi-permanent com-munity involved in (limited) farming activities. Fur-thermore, botanical remains from these later layers also illustrate that people were moving fluidly be-tween these two spheres of economy; domesticated plants, for example, illustrate that people may have

Fig. 5: Location of Togolok 1 along the ancient paleochannel (basemap: Google Earth 2016; GIS elaboration by R. Arciero).




been involved in seasonal agricultural activities (see Carra and Spengler in Cerasetti et al. forthcom-ing a). Future investigations at Togolok 1 will allow us to understand how the patterns and timing of cohabitation were adapted to, and how various cul-tural and lifestyle elements were integrated into, a larger cultural context.

Togolok 1 is composed of a large northern mound, “Tepe 1”, and a small lower mound, “Tepe 2” (Sarianidi 1990; Sarianidi 1994; Hiebert 1994; Gubaev/Koshelenko/Tosi 1998; Salvatori 2008; Cerasetti 2012). From 2014 to 2015, research con-ducted in the centre of “Tepe 1” identified a “living area” (or more generally a domestic context) where light-weight movable structures were built as shel-ters and mobile pastoralists made fires for cooking food and for heating. While resting at this site, the occupants could easily control medium-sized ani-mals grouped in the adjacent pen, as testified by the presence of numerous small fragments of wattle and daub (wall fragments) (Fig. 6).

We interpreted these archaeological finds as the remains of a possible mobile pastoralist camp, with fireplaces, storage-pits, and numerous post holes, probably supporting poles for shelters and connect-ed with artificial platforms. The “living area” was characterised by the presence of a large fireplace with a significant quantity of large- to medium-sized animal bones, likely ovicaprid, and both handmade and wheel-shaped pottery. We further interpreted this area as a “food processing location”, used by mobile pastoralists during their seasonal stay at the

camp (see Arciero in Cerasetti et al. forthcoming a).

Adjacent to this “living area”, the excavators iden-tified a refuse deposit enclosed by non-permanent structures. The presence of numerous post holes and fragments of wattle and daub allowed us to re-construct this area as a probable herd-animal pen, presumably to hold sheep and goats, as testified by the presence of sheep/goat dung and twigs from shrubs. In the sediments within this pen, we also found charcoal, burnt wood, and the bones of medi-um-sized animals (likely sheep and goat) in a thick layer spread over the entire trench. The excavation trench was also cut by two fireplaces, where hand-made and wheel-shaped pottery fragments were concentrated. On the eastern side of this trench, the excavators identified a greyish artificial platform which may have also been the base of a temporary structure (see Forni in Cerasetti et al. forthcom-ing a). The herd-animal pen was part of the pastoral-ist camp, together with the shelter where the shep-herds could rest and watch their nearby flocks.

In addition, the sediment samples from this trench provided a large number of carbonised seeds. These seeds probably came from dung that had been burned as fuel, and the samples from this context were characterised by the excellent preservation of a remarkable variety of taxa. These remains help us to understand the paleodietary practices of these pastoralist peoples, as well as what cultivated and wild flora characterised the surrounding landscape

Fig. 6: Modern pastoralist camp with a herd animal pen to the left, close to a “living area” on the right (photo by B. Cerasetti 2015).




at that time (see Forni; Carra and Spengler in Cer-asetti et al. forthcoming a).

The bones, mainly from sheep and goat, were recovered together with handmade and wheel-shaped pottery and were probably the remnants of meals. Sheep and goat are the most prevalent zooarchaelogical component at the site and are still the most common animals raised by herders in the region today. However, it is interesting to note that other species, like pigs and cows, were also pres-ent in the assemblage. These animal remains are of considerable interest from an economic and en-vironmental point of view seeing that they are less mobile, need more water, and require a different human-animal relationship for their care and main-tenance. Furthermore, there is clear evidence of hunting at the site, attested by the presence of wild faunal remains of animals that need vegetation-rich environments, such as cervids and animals typical of open environments like leporidae (see Curci and De Grossi Mazzorin in Cerasetti et al. forthcom-ing a). Over the next few seasons of excavation, we will explore the zooarchaeological remains further, developing this crucial dataset to better understand

the different ecosystems that characterised the area surrounding Togolok 1 in the Bronze Age.

Two partially burnt clay spindle whorls or loom weights were also identified in these contexts; it is clear that textiles were produced at the site using upright looms, as opposed to the typical hand looms used by many mobile pastoralist groups across Cen-tral Asia to this day. At present, a wide range of orna-mental textiles with unique designs and patterns are produced in southern Central Asia by mobile pasto-ralist groups. These spindle whorls could also rep-resent ornaments in and of themselves. One object typically recovered from Namazga VI sites is the bi-conical chlorite spindle whorl decorated with three incised circles with a dotted centre, widely present in the large sedentary Late Bronze Age settlements (Masimov/Salvatori/Udeumuradov 1998, 38).

At the same time, the excavators recovered the bottom of a red-stone vessel as well as a rectangu-lar chlorite amulet, with a depiction on one side of a winged woman surrounded by snakes and on the other a lion with a serpentine body (Sarianidi 2007: 100–104; Winkelmann 2007: 193–207) (Fig. 7).

Fig. 7: Head of a terracotta anthropomorphic figurine and a chlorite amulet recovered during the 2015 campaign in Togolok 1 (inventory photos a. and b. and image elaborations by L. Forni 2015).




The spindle whorls and amulet represent typical “sedentary” objects recovered from a mobile pasto-ralist context, and help illustrate the level of integra-tion between pastoralists and sedentary farmers, and the exchange of goods and knowledge between them.

The diet of the people who seasonally inhabited the area on top of the ruins of the ancient city of To-golok 1 after the sedentary village was abandoned by its original occupants was diverse. The cultivated crops included grains, such as barley and wheat; le-gumes, such as grass peas, lentils, peas, and vetch; and fruits, such as apricots (or plums) and grapes. Interestingly, until now broomcorn millet grains were absent from the assemblage, despite the fact that they were recovered from other contempora-neous small-scale pastoralist sites in the region, like Ojakly, Chopantam, and the campsite at Adji Kui 1. Although millet was also absent from the large con-temporaneous urban centres of prehistoric Margi-ana (Moore et al. 1994; Miller 1999; Cerasetti et al. forthcoming a), the excavations conducted at the Bronze Age urban centres in the Murghab re-gion suggest that caution is needed in drawing con-clusions about the exact distribution of the millet in this territory. Nonetheless, millet seems to be asso-ciated more closely with small-scale sites than with large sites at this time period.

The large quantity of domesticated grains and legumes among the preserved botanical remains re-covered from the site is clear evidence of just how complex the economy was at this settlement and how integrated the broader economic system. While it is not clear whether these grains were locally pro-duced or obtained through trade, it is evident that the pastoral and agricultural peoples on the alluvi-al fan were closely integrated and that knowledge of farming and seeds moved often between the two groups. The archaeobotanical data suggest that pastoralist products were supplemented by grains and legumes obtained from seasonal farming near the site as well as through intensive exchange with neighbouring farmers (see Carra and Spengler in Cerasetti et al. forthcoming a).

In the archaeobotanical assemblage from the site, seeds from wild herbaceous plant species that are typical of arid regions, as well as species that are typical of wetlands, were recovered. The presence of such a diverse array of wild species, which presum-ably were incorporated into the assemblage through the burning of dung as fuel, could suggest that peo-ple living at Togolok 1 were herding their animals in micro-environmental areas near rivers, canals or small oases, and that the broader vegetation in the region was that of an arid steppe, much like the herding patterns used in the region today (see Car-ra and Spengler in Cerasetti et al. forthcoming a). This data could also be another confirmation that the process of desertification in the Murghab region,

and thus the withdrawal of the river water, was al-ready well underway, especially as Togolok 1, which is located in a central position in the north-eastern section of the alluvial fan, would have comprised the Bronze-Iron Age water system (Cerasetti 2008; Cerasetti/Tosi 2010). As the rivers dried up and crops could no longer be irrigated, or soils became salinated, people had to switch back to a more pas-toral economy, and this process may have played a role in the abandonment of the village by its seden-tary inhabitants.

In conclusion, on the basis of the available data from Togolok 1, as well as from several other sites that our team has excavated in Margiana (Cerasetti forthcoming a; Cerasetti forthcoming b; Ceraset-ti/Rouse/de Nigris 2018; Spengler et al. 2016; Rouse/Cerasetti 2014; Cattani 2008), it is pos-sible to argue that during the Late Bronze Age the relations between mobile pastoralists and farmers were highly integrated. By the mid-2nd millenni-um BCE, the introduction to southern Central Asia of crops from regions farther away led to an inten-sification of the agricultural system, a change of ecology in the Murghab region, and finally to more expansive irrigation systems to support the growing population. The results of these important process-es radically transformed the situation in the Middle Bronze Age Margiana, when the entire settlement pattern was centred on major urban centres. During the Late and Final Bronze Ages, the territory was settled in a more capillary way and the settlement system became less hierarchical and more homo-geneous among different urban centres (Salvatori 2008; Cerasetti 2012).

This settlement structure, characterised by a dif-fused population rather than densely occupied cen-tral nodes, remained almost unchanged in the Early Iron Age (Iron Age 1), before the strong process of Achaemenid nationalisation began. At first glance, it seems counter-intuitive to believe that the inte-gration between sedentary and mobile people was one of the phenomena of significant influence on the process of urbanisation in the Murghab region in the following Iron Age. However, the excavations at the site of Togolok 1, as evidence of the constant mobile pastoralist presence in the last phases of large Bronze Age towns in the Murghab region, have clearly demonstrated how the coexistence between mobile pastoralists and sedentary farming groups, and the investment in architecture at all the sites, attest to a high level of integration between the two cultures. The gradual process of this integration marks the beginning of a deep transformation of the territory, leading to a complex and variable system that characterised the following Iron Age, the inter-pretation of which requires deeper investigations than those conducted so far in the vast region of the Murghab.




Acknowledgments: The authors wish to thank Dr Mukhammed A. Mamedov of the National De-partment for the Protection, Research and Resto-ration of Monuments of the Ministry of Culture of Turkmenistan, who is co-partner of the project, for his strong support of the present research. We would like also to thank Dr Rejepmyrat Jepbarov, Di-rector of the Ancient Merv National Historical Park

of the Ministry of Culture of Turkmenistan, for his kind hospitality and help with the organisation of fieldwork.

Funding for the project has been provided by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation and the Department of History and Cul-tures of University of Bologna.

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Urban Cultures of Central Asia from the Bronze Age to the ......Bronze and Iron Age Urbanisation in Turkmenistan 67 characteristic of mobile pastoralists and not of sed- entary agriculturalists