Abstract
The oasis of Samarkand in the Middle Zeravshan Valley (modern Uzbekistan) was a major political and economic center in ancient western Central Asia. The chronology of its irrigation system was, until now, only constrained by the quality and quantity of archaeological findings and several different hypotheses have been proposed for it. We use a new approach combining archaeological surveying, radiocarbon dating, sedimentary analysis, and the numerical modeling of a flood event to offer new evidence for, and quantitative dating of, the development of irrigation system on the southern flank of the Middle Zeravshan Valley. We analyzed 13 bones and charcoals from 3 archaeological sites and obtained new 14C ages from Afrasiab (ancient Samarkand), a dwelling damaged by flooding in the 2nd century AD (site code: SAM-174) and the fortress of Kafir Kala. We established the origin of sedimentary deposits at the sites to infer the presence of the 2 most important canals of the southern flank: the Dargom and the Yanghiaryk. Finally, we show with a numerical model of overland flow that a natural flood was unlikely to have produced the damage observed at SAM-174. The combined results of the study indicate that the canals south of Samarkand existed, and were mainly developed, in the 2nd century AD and were not connected to the main feeding canal of Afrasiab at that time.
Highlights
The human development of Central Asia’s main centers was long sustained by large regional-scale irrigation systems (Lewis 1966; Andrianov 1969, 1995; Francfort and Lecomte 2002)
We focus on the southern flank of the Samarkand Oasis, where the irrigation system upstream from Afrasiab consisted of the large—and still preserved today—Dargom Canal, and of its smaller auxiliary, the Yanghiaryk Canal, which was rebuilt during Soviet times (Figure 1)
Our work provides important results to constrain the development of the early irrigation system and the settlement dynamics of one of the most important central Asian oases
Summary
The human development of Central Asia’s main centers was long sustained by large regional-scale irrigation systems (Lewis 1966; Andrianov 1969, 1995; Francfort and Lecomte 2002). The oasis of Samarkand in the Middle Zeravshan Valley, Uzbekistan, is no exception. It is based on 2 major canals: the Dargom in the south and the Bulungur in the north. Recent research shows that the Dargom Canal was built by successively merging the small piedmont streams of the valley’s southern streams, or sais (we use this Uzbek term hereafter for nonperennial tributary streams) and, by diverting part of the Zeravshan waters into large hillside canals (Isamiddinov 2002; Marconi et al 2009; Stride et al 2009; Mantellini et al 2011). The hypotheses differ widely and propose various construction times: during the 1st half of the 1st millennium BC (Isamiddinov 2002), in the Achaemenid period (6th–4th centuries BC) connected to a strong central state (Shishkina 1987; Grenet 2002), at the turn of the Current Era (Gulyamov 1975; Mukhamedjanov 1975, 1996), as a result of a collaborative effort within a noncentralized society during the 1st half of the 1st millennium AD (Stride et al 2009), or even as late as the early Mid-
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