Archeological Data on the Genesis of Feudalism in Central Asia: A Case-study of Nakhsheb, Khorezm, and the Chu River Valley

Abstract

The outstanding historians and archeologists S. P. Tolstov and A. Iu. Iakubovskii first posed the problem of the nature of the transitional period from the slaveholding socioeconomic order to the feudal one in Central Asia. S. P. Tolstov found signs of a decline in classical society in the fourth to sixth centuries [C.E.] on the basis of archeological findings in Khorezm [1, pp. 27-29]; the term "classical" was first applied by Tolstov to the study of the history of Central Asia in order to describe an essentially slaveholding society.1 He dates the beginning of the medieval period to the sixth to eleventh centuries [1, p. 29].