Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-q99xh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T08:24:27.012Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Dating the Irrigation System of the Samarkand Oasis: A Geoarchaeological Study

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2016

Luca C Malatesta*
Affiliation:
Institute of Geology, ETH Zurich, Switzerland Now at the Division of Geological and Planetary Science, California Institute of Technology, USA
Sébastien Castelltort
Affiliation:
Institute of Geology, ETH Zurich, Switzerland Now at the Section of Earth Sciences, University of Geneva, Switzerland
Simone Mantellini
Affiliation:
Department of Archaeology, University of Bologna, Italy
Vincenzo Picotti
Affiliation:
Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Bologna, Italy
Irka Hajdas
Affiliation:
Laboratory of Ion Beam Physics, ETH Zurich, Switzerland
Guy Simpson
Affiliation:
Department of Geology and Paleontology, University of Geneva, Switzerland
Amriddin E Berdimuradov
Affiliation:
Academy of Sciences of Uzbekistan, Institute of Archaeology of Samarkand, Uzbekistan
Maurizio Tosi
Affiliation:
Department of Archaeology, University of Bologna, Italy
Sean D Willett
Affiliation:
Institute of Geology, ETH Zurich, Switzerland
*
Corresponding author. Email: luca@caltech.edu.
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

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.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © 2012 by the Arizona Board of Regents on behalf of the University of Arizona 

References

Andrianov, BV. 1969. Drevnie orositel'nye sistemy priaral'ya. Moscow: Izdatel'stvo Nauka.Google Scholar
Andrianov, BV. 1995. The history of economic development in the Aral region and its influence on the environment. GeoJournal 35:11–6.Google Scholar
Askarov, KK. 1995. Selskaya okruga i ee rol v formirovanii rannesrednevekovogo Samarkanda (po materialam selskoy okrugi Samarkanda). Avtoref. Diss. Inst. 1st. Volume 12. Tashkent: Akademiya NAUK Uzb.Google Scholar
Bartold, VV. 1977. Turkestan down to the Mongol Invasion. 4th edition. London: E J W Gibb Trust.Google Scholar
Berdimuradov, AE, Tosi, M, Mantellini, S. 2010. Uzbek-Italian Archaeological Project: Samarkand and Its Territory; Season 2010, Preliminary Report. University of Bologna.Google Scholar
Bronk Ramsey, C. 1995. Radiocarbon calibration and analysis of stratigraphy: the OxCal program. Radiocarbon 37(2):425–30.Google Scholar
Bronk Ramsey, C. 2001. Development of the radiocarbon calibration program. Radiocarbon 43(2A):355–63.Google Scholar
Brown, TA, Nelson, DE, Vogel, JS, Southon, JR. 1988. Improved collagen extraction by modified Longin method. Radiocarbon 30(2):171–7.Google Scholar
Codini, GB. 2010. Nomads and farmers in an urban context. An essay on the settlement of the Middle Zeravshan Valley at the edges of Samarkand region (Uzbekistan) [Nomadi e agricoltori nel contesto urbano. Un saggio sul popolamento della Media Valle dello Zeravshan ai margini della regione di Samarcanda (Uzbekistan)]. MA thesis (Tesi di Laurea Magistrale), University of Bologna, Department of Archaeology, Ravenna.Google Scholar
Fedchenko, A. 1870. Topographical sketch of the Zarafshan Valley. Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London 40:448–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Francfort, H-P, Lecomte, O. 2002. Irrigation et societe en Asie centrale des origines a l'epoque achemenide. Annales 57(3):625–63.Google Scholar
Gentelle, P. 2003. Traces d'Eau: Un Géographe Chez les Archéologues. Paris: Editions Belin. p 172–32.Google Scholar
Grenet, F. 2002. Samarkand I. History and Archeology. Encyclopaedia Iranica. Online edition.Google Scholar
Gulyamov, YaG. 1975. Kushanskoe tsarstvo i drevnyaya irrigatsiya sredney azii. In: Trudy mejdunarodnoy konferentsii po istorii, arkheologii i kulture tsentralnoy azii v kushanskuyu epokhu (Dushanbe, 27 sentyabry - 6 oktyabrya 1968). Tom I, Dushanbe, 1974, v. 120.Google Scholar
Hajdas, I, Bonani, G, Thut, J, Leone, G, Pfenninger, R, Maden, C. 2004. A report on sample preparation at the ETH/PSI AMS facility in Zurich. Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research B 223–224:267–71.Google Scholar
Hajdas, I, Michczyński, A, Bonani, G, Wacker, L, Furrer, H. 2009. Dating bones near the limit of the radiocarbon dating method: study case mammoth from Niederweningen, ZH Switzerland. Radiocarbon 51(2):675–80.Google Scholar
Isamiddinov, MK. 2002. Istoki gorodskoy kul'tury samar-kandskogo sogda. Tashkent: Izd-vo.Google Scholar
Ivanitzkiy, ID, Inevatkina, ON. 1999. Periodizatziya i etapi razvitiya vodosnabjeniya afrasiaba. Istoriya Materialnoy Kul'tury Uzbekistana 30:96103.Google Scholar
Jones, PD, Mann, ME. 2004. Climate over past millennia. Reviews of Geophysics 42: RG2002, doi::10.1029/2003RG000143.Google Scholar
Lebedeva, TI. 1994. Selskaya okruga i ee rol v formirovanii rannesrednevekovogo Samarkanda (po materialam selskoy okrugi Samarkanda). Avtoref. Diss. Inst. Ist. Volume 12. Tashkent: Akademiya NAUK Uzb. p 22–3.Google Scholar
Lewis, RA 1966. Early irrigation in West Turkestan. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 56:467–91.Google Scholar
Longin, R. 1971. New method of collagen extraction for radiocarbon dating. Nature 230(5291):241–2.Google Scholar
Mann, ME, Jones, PD. 2003. Global surface temperatures over the past two millennia. Geophysical Research Letters 30:1820, doi:10.1029/2003GL017814.Google Scholar
Mantellini, S. 2003. The Dargom Canal and the Early Settlement of the Middle Zeravshan Valley. In: Pagani, S, editor. Italo-Uzbek Scientific Cooperation in Archaeology and Islamic Studies: An Overview (Rome, 30 January 2001). Rome: Instituto Italiano per l'Africa e l'Oriente. p 41–8.Google Scholar
Mantellini, S, Berdimuadov, A. 2005. Archaeological explorations in the Sogdian Fortress of Kafir Kala. Ancient Civilizations from Scythia to Siberia 11(1–2):107–32.Google Scholar
Mantellini, S, Rondelli, B, Stride, S. 2011. Analytical approach for representing the water landscape evolution in Samarkand oasis (Uzbekistan). In: Jerem, E, Redö, F, Szeverényi, V, editors. On the Road to Reconstructing the Past. Proceedings of the 36th Annual International Conference on Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology (CAA). Budapest, Hungary, 2–6 April 2008. p 388–96.Google Scholar
Marconi, V, Mantellini, S, Picotti, V, Gabbianelli, G. 2009. The origin of the Dargom canal in the oasis of Samarkand (Uzbekistan). A new scenario from geoarcheological data. In: EGU General Assembly 2009. 19–24 April 2009, Vienna, Austria. p 6195.Google Scholar
Mukhamedjanov, AR. 1975. K istorii irrigatsii v kushanskuyu epokhu. In: Trudy mejdunarodnoy konferentsii po istorii, arkheologii i kulture tsentralnoy azii v kushanskuyu epokhu (Dushanbe, 27 sentyabry - 6 oktyabrya 1968). Tom II, Dushanbe. v 278.Google Scholar
Mukhamedjanov, AR. 1996. Economy and social system in Central Asia in the Kushan Age. In: Harmatta, J, editor. History of Civilization of Central Asia. Volume 2. The Development of Sedentary and Nomadic Civilizations: 700 B.C. to A.D. 250. Paris: UNESCO Publishing. p 265–90.Google Scholar
Nemec, M, Wacker, L, Gaeggeler, H. 2010. Optimization of the graphitization process at AGE-1. Radiocarbon 52(3):1380–93.Google Scholar
Oberhänsli, H, Boroffka, N, Sorrel, P. 2007. Climate variability during the past 2,000 years and past economic and irrigation activities in the Aral Sea basin. Irrigation and Drainage Systems 21(3–4):167–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reimer, PJ, Baillie, MGL, Bard, E, Bayliss, A, Beck, JW, Bertrand, CJH, Blackwell, PG, Buck, CE, Burr, GS, Cutler, KB, Damon, PE, Edwards, RL, Fairbanks, RG, Friedrich, M, Guilderson, TP, Hogg, AG, Hughen, KA, Kromer, B, McCormac, G, Manning, S, Bronk Ramsey, C, Reimer, RW, Remmele, S, Southon, JR, Stuiver, M, Talamo, S, Taylor, FW, van der Plicht, J, Weyhenmeyer, CE. 2004. IntCal04 terrestrial radiocarbon age calibration, 0–26 cal kyr BP. Radiocarbon 46(3):1029–58.Google Scholar
Schilman, B, Ayalon, A, Bar-Matthews, M. 2002. Sea-land paleoclimate correlation in the Eastern Mediterranean region during the late Holocene. Israel Journal of Earth Sciences 51:181–90.Google Scholar
Shirinov, T, Tosi, M. 2003. Land behind Samarkand. In: Pagani, S, editor. Italo-Uzbek Scientific Cooperation in Archaeology and Islamic Studies: An Overview (Rome, 30 January 2001). Rome: Instituto Italiano per l'Africa e l'Oriente. p 1341.Google Scholar
Shishkina, GV. 1987. Ancient Samarkand and its surroundings (Drevniy Samarkand i ego okruga). In: Urban Culture of Bactria-Tokharistan and Sogdia: Antiquity and Early Middle Ages [Gorodskaya kultura baktrii-tokharistana i sogda: antichnosty, rannee srednevekove]. Material of the Soviet-French Colloquium (Samarkand, 1986) [Materialy sovetskogo-frantsuzkogo kollokviuma (Samarkand, 1986)]. Tashkent. p 167–70.Google Scholar
Shnitnikov, AV. 1975. On the History of the Lakes of Northern Kazakhstan (Iz Istorii Ozer Severnogo Kazakstana). Leningrad: Nauka.Google Scholar
Shnitnikov, AV. 1980. Lakes of the Tien Shan and Their History (Ozera Tian'-Shanya i ikh istoriya). Leningrad: Nauka.Google Scholar
Simpson, G, Castelltort, S. 2006. Coupled model of surface water flow, sediment transport and morphological evolution. Computers & Geosciences 32(10):1600–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sorrel, P, Popescu, S-M, Klotz, S, Suc, J-P, Oberhänsli, H. 2007. Climate variability in the Aral Sea basin (Central Asia) during the late Holocene based on vegetation changes. Quaternary Research 67(3):357–70.Google Scholar
Stride, S, Rondclli, B, Mantellini, S. 2009. Canals versus horses: political power in the oasis of Samarkand. World Archaeology 41(1):7387.Google Scholar
Synal, H-A, Stocker, M, Suter, M. 2007. MICADAS: a new compact radiocarbon AMS system. Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research B 259(1):713.Google Scholar
Wacker, L, Nemec, M, Bourquin, J. 2010. A revolutionary graphitisation system: fully automated, compact and simple. Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research B 268(7–8):931–4.Google Scholar
Zheng, J, Zhang, P, Ge, Q, Man, Z. 2001. Centennial changes of drought/flood spatial pattern in eastern China for the last 2000 years. Progress in Natural Science 11(4):280–7.Google Scholar