The National Science Foundation will support Ph.D. dissertation improvement research to be overseen by Dr. Michael Frachetti and conducted by Ms. Lynne Rouse in an archaeological study of interaction between mobile pastoralist communities and sedentary agriculturalists in the territory of the Murghab Delta, Turkmenistan during the middle to late Bronze Age (ca. 2200-1800 BC). Central Asia is a region with a deep history of mobile-sedentary relationships that continues to influence modern society. The unique history of Central Asia as a locus of mobile-sedentary interaction has often been interpreted using geographically and temporally inappropriate anthropological models, effectively denying this region its significance in local and regional developments. Rouse's project uses archaeological data from oasis regions of southern Turkmenistan to examine mobile-sedentary interaction in the pivotal Bronze Age period, when independent groups of mobile pastoralists appear to interact with urban, agrarian communities for the first time. Through excavation and survey targeting mobile pastoral remains, this project will provide much needed data to balance the urban, sedentary-focused archaeological research of the last forty years. By scientifically documenting the actual contribution of prehistoric mobile groups to social, political, and economic trajectories, the project offers insight into key issues of economic variation in early oasis communities of Central Asia. At a wider theoretical level, the impact of documenting the interplay of adaptive strategies in Murghab Delta of southern Turkmenistan provides a model for reassessing broader anthropological paradigms that link mobile and sedentary strategies through socio-political power relationships, and ties into key anthropological questions regarding inter-group interactions and the growth of complex socio-political systems in prehistory.
This project will provide important information for contextualizing the history of mobile-sedentary interaction in both Turkmenistan and wider Central Asia. The period and processes under examination are a crucial turning point in the prehistory of the region, but are generally unrecognized and understudied in Western scholarship. This is due in part to the modern history of Turkmenistan, which has discouraged international scholarship. As such, there has been relatively little anthropological research carried out in modern Turkmenistan, and no archaeological research carried out by any American since the mid-1990s. The proposed project focuses on the particular characteristics of mobile-sedentary interaction in the Bronze Age Murghab Delta, but aims to fit this knowledge into broader understandings of the formation and maintenance of dynamic group interactions. Because study of mobile-sedentary interactions in key related areas - such as Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan - is effectively off-limits to current scholarship, examining the impact of mobile-sedentary relationships in southern Turkmenistan is especially meaningful. And because this study focuses on a process of interaction that affected the economic, social, and political life of each participant group, its implications are immediately relevant to the complex interactions of the modern world.
Central Asia holds enduring fascination as a geographic and cultural epicenter along the Silk Roads, with unique cultural interconnections shaping the region throughout history, and relationships between nomadic and urban populations having a formative role. In popular and scholarly imagination, nomadic groups are often painted as raiders and traders, in constant need of the goods, technologies, and ‘civilizing’ social forces anchored in urban centers. But is the polarization of settled and nomadic groups helpful to our understanding of history, and the impact of that history on the modern world? And how might broadly-defined ‘cultural’ differences be broken down into the everyday patterns of people relating to one another? The most recent academic research indicates the differences between settled and nomadic groups are not as clear-cut as historical texts might have us believe. We now know that nomads, rather than being a destabilizing force, actually helped establish the inter-regional connections and circulate the great variety of goods and ideas that became so vividly manifested in the Silk Roads. The archaeological research funded by this NSF grant, in particular, shows that more than 3,000 years ago settled and nomadic groups were mutually influencing one another in this key geographic zone. The Murghab region of modern Turkmenistan is home to some of the most ancient cities in Central Asia, which during the Bronze Age (ca. 2200-1500 BC) were fed by large irrigated fields and housed skilled craftsmen whose unique goods were traded as far away as Mesopotamia, the Arabian peninsula, and the Indus Valley of modern Pakistan. These cities also had immediate local contact with a different cultural group, whose primary food resource was the flocks of sheep and goat they herded in regular cycles (without the aid of horses, which at this time period were not commonly used in Central Asia). These mobile pastoralists (or nomads) not only borrowed technologies from their urban farming neighbors, but also brought innovations into the region, which we can now identify based on direct archaeological evidence. Archaeological excavation at the mobile pastoralist campsite of Ojakly, funded in part by the NSF and partnering American, Italian, and Turkmen researchers, produced results that are the first of their kind for research on the settled-mobile interactions of the Bronze Age Murghab. Dated to around 1600 BC, Ojakly is the earliest, largest, and most complex campsite currently known in the Murghab. The site was organized into discreet living and working zones, and in living areas different spaces were designated for temporary post-framed constructions, food preparation, and refuse dumping. The site was re-occupied several times, since different layers of post-holes and associated hearths could be identified, but each set of inhabitants kept the same spatial arrangement at the site. From the animal bone and plant remains, we know the inhabitants of Ojakly were dedicated sheep and goat herders, and that unlike their farming neighbors, did not incorporate a significant amount of grain, fruit, or cattle into their diet. However, Ojakly’s pastoralists did use millet, a crop not widely grown by settled farmers in the Murghab until at least 500 years later, and perhaps first introduced to the area by pastoralists like those living at Ojakly. Pottery at Ojakly was handmade using stacked coils, decorated with geometric designs, and fired in shallow pits, practices that kept it visually and technologically distinct from the pottery of neighboring farmers, even though both groups used the same clay resources. Interestingly, the only imported vessels at Ojakly were a specific type of tall drinking cup common in farming settlements. In a separate working area of the site, a collapsed ceramic kiln containing unfired ceramics best described as a hybrid of ‘farmer’ and ‘pastoralist’ manufacturing types suggests experimental production by mobile pastoralists. Based on the data from Ojakly, we recognize that mobile pastoralists in the Bronze Age Murghab distinguished themselves from their sedentary farming neighbors not only through food production strategies, but also through visual cues such as pottery that marked their community or possibly cultural identity. Just as important, the conscious choices related to imported pottery and adaptation of ceramic production techniques at Ojakly indicate that the engagements of mobile pastoralists were careful social negotiations, not the wholesale trading or raiding expeditions widely accepted as the default pattern for mobile-sedentary interactions. Archaeology is in a unique position to inform us about the everyday practices of real people. In the case of ancient Central Asia, it tells us early sedentary-mobile interactions sparked lasting changes in both communities. Moreover, we see that the line between sedentary and mobile communities is not so simply drawn, since production, technology, and social choices can overlap. Interactions between "tribal nomads" and "civilized states" – either in the past or in modern manifestations – are not reducible to idealized black-and-white roles; all relationships are socially navigated, and every encounter shapes history.
