scholarly journals Rapid intensity decrease during the second half of the first millennium BCE in Central Asia and global implications

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Bonilla‐Alba ◽  
M. Gómez‐Paccard ◽  
F. J. Pavón‐Carrasco ◽  
J. del Río ◽  
E. Beamud ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Central Asia ◽  
Intensity Decrease ◽  
First Millennium

Relationships between loess and the Silk Road reflected by environmental change and its implications for human societies in the area of ancient Panjikent, central Asia

2017 ◽  
Vol 89 (3) ◽  
pp. 691-701 ◽  
Author(s):  
Piotr Owczarek ◽  
Magdalena Opała-Owczarek ◽  
Oimahmad Rahmonov ◽  
Abdurauf Razzokov ◽  
Zdzisław Jary ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Central Asia ◽  
Loess Soil ◽  
Silk Road ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Erosion Rates ◽  
Lower Terrace ◽  
First Millennium ◽  
Climatic Impacts ◽  
The Town ◽  
The Silk Road

AbstractRich ancient societies of central Asia developed on the basis of trade between East and West; their existence was dependent on natural resources that favoured agriculture. The branches of the Silk Road in central Asia clearly coincide with loess areas, where many settlements were erected based on the presence of fertile loess soil and water. The aim of the study was to analyse the environmental factors that led to the growth and decline of one of the most important Silk Road “loess towns,” ancient Panjikent, as an example of human and climatic impacts on landscape changes. The town, established in the fifth century, quickly became one of the most important cities of Sogdiana. Local loess material was used for the production of the sun-dried bricks. Rapid population growth led to deforestation and consequently increased the intensity of erosion rates and reductions in cultivation area. A period of drought near the end of the first millennium AD influenced the final abandonment of the ancient town and its relocation to the lower terrace of the Zarafshan River. A decline in natural and agricultural resources and subsequently climatic forces caused a decline in the number of cities in semiarid regions of central Asia.

Colonization, Sinicization, and the Polyscriptic Northwest

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tamara T. Chin
Keyword(s):  
Central Asia ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Foreign Languages ◽  
Literary Practice ◽  
Literary Genres ◽  
Mass Migration ◽  
First Millennium ◽  
Chinese Texts ◽  
Chinese Writing ◽  
Eastern Central Asia

This chapter gives a chronological sketch of China’s past as a real and imagined part of a culturally larger history. It addresses the significance of the historiographic paradigms of colonization and Sinicization, highlighting the literary genres and frontier contexts that complicate linear narratives of empire and literary practice. The final section on the “Polyscriptic Northwest” introduces the diversity of literatures in foreign scripts and languages that flourished alongside Literary Chinese texts in eastern Central Asia (China’s Northwest). Throughout the first millennium ce, mass migration across the politically polycentric Northwest led to different practices of acculturation. This included the adoption of non-Chinese and Chinese writing for religious and secular purposes. Given the traditional prestige of writing in China as a signifier of civilization (wen), this encounter with foreign (non-Sinographic) scripts, and not simply foreign languages, marks a watershed; hence the heuristic emphasis here on “polyscriptic” rather than multilingual.

scholarly journals OBJECTS OF ANCIENT ART IN CENTRAL ASIA: THE SEARCH FOR THE ORIGIN OF ELEMENTS OF THE EARLY ANIMAL STYLE (the work of the Tuva expedition of the IA RAS)

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
И.В. Рукавишникова
Keyword(s):  
Central Asia ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Aerial Photography ◽  
Early Iron Age ◽  
Single Group ◽  
Wooden Structure ◽  
First Millennium ◽  
Burial Mounds ◽  
First Millennium Bc ◽  
Wooden Structures

В статье обобщаются результаты исследований курганов раннего железного века в Туве с применением аэрофотосъемки для поиска курганов начала I тыс. до н. э., близких по конструкции кургану Аржан-1. Был выявлен курган Аржан-5, находящийся вблизи кургана Аржан-1. Курганная каменная насыпь сильно повреждена, но сохранилась каменно-деревянная конструкция, как и в Аржане-1, и предметы упряжи в зверином стиле. После проведения анализа проб деревянных конструкций, состава бронз и антропологических определений удалось сделать вывод, что Аржан-5 принадлежит к кругу Аржана-1, формирует с ним единую группу курганов и связан общей историей. Выделяется хронологический горизонт археологической культуры Аржана-1, когда уже создаются шедевры древнего искусства архаичного звериного стиля. The paper summarizes the results of the study of the Early Iron Age burial mounds in Tuva using aerial photography for searching constructions from the beginning of the first millennium BC, which are similar in design to the Arzhan-1 mound. The Arzhan-5 mound was revealed, located near the Arzhan-1. It was badly damaged, but the stone-wooden structure has survived and the harness in the animal style was preserved, just like in Arzhan-1. Due to analysis of the samples from wooden structures, of the composition of bronzes and to the anthropological identification, it become possible to conclude that Arzhan-5 belongs to the Arzhan-1 circle they form a single group of mounds and have a common history. The chronological horizon of the archaeological culture of Arzhan-1 is highlighted, when masterpieces of the ancient art of the archaic animal style are already being created.

Central Asia and the Interaction between the Iranian Plateau and the Steppes in Late First Millennium BC

2018 ◽  
Vol 24 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 331-353
Author(s):  
Johanna Lhuillier ◽  
Julio Bendezu-Sarmiento
Keyword(s):  
Central Asia ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Aral Sea ◽  
Cultural Groups ◽  
Late Neolithic ◽  
Stratigraphic Sequence ◽  
Iranian Plateau ◽  
Southern Central ◽  
First Millennium ◽  
Middle Iron Age

AbstractResearch led by the joint French-Turkmen Archaeological Expedition (MAFTur) at Ulug-depe have brought to light the longest continuous stratigraphic sequence of southern Central Asia, starting from the Late Neolithic up to the Middle Iron Age. During the last fieldwork seasons, a later, still poorly-known occupation has been identified: after its abandonment at the end of the Middle Iron Age period, Ulug-depe was briefly reoccupied during the late 1st millennium BC. The archaeological levels related to this occupation are extremely poorly preserved, and this stage is mainly witnessed by a particular pottery complex. Preliminary and ongoing researches on this pottery complex suggest that it principally includes Hellenistic-period vessels associated with some more unusual shapes. This association of material finds analogies in the area of interaction between the northern and the southern parts of Central Asia (i.e., in Uzbekistan, in a territory stretching from Tashkent to the Aral Sea through the Syr Darya area). In this paper, we will present a first overview of these discoveries, placing Ulug-depe at the crossroads of different cultural groups, sedentary and possibly nomadic, at the end of the 1st millennium BC.

scholarly journals The ornamental trousers from Sampula (Xinjiang, China): their origins and biography

Antiquity ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 83 (322) ◽  
pp. 1065-1075 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mayke Wagner ◽  
Wang Bo ◽  
Pavel Tarasov ◽  
Sidsel Maria Westh-Hansen ◽  
Elisabeth Völling ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Life History ◽  
Central Asia ◽  
Tarim Basin ◽  
Second Century ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Third ◽  
First Millennium

A decorated pair of trousers excavated from a well-preserved tomb in the Tarim Basin proved to have a highly informative life history, teased out by the authors – with archaeological, historical and art historical dexterity. Probably created under Greek influence in a Bactrian palace, the textile started life in the third/second century BC as an ornamental wall hanging, showing a centaur blowing a war-trumpet and a nearly life-size warrior of the steppe with his spear. The palace was raided by nomads, one of whom worked a piece of the tapestry into a pair of trousers. They brought no great luck to the wearer who ended his days in a massacre by the Xiongnu, probably in the first century BC. The biography of this garment gives a vivid glimpse of the dynamic life of Central Asia at the end of the first millennium.

Millet cultivation in Central Asia: A response to Miller et al.

The Holocene ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 27 (9) ◽  
pp. 1415-1422 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Baker Brite ◽  
Fiona Jane Kidd ◽  
Alison Betts ◽  
Michelle Negus Cleary
Keyword(s):  
Central Asia ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Land Development ◽  
State Level ◽  
Agricultural Change ◽  
Panicum Miliaceum ◽  
Underlying Assumption ◽  
Central Asian ◽  
First Millennium ◽  
First Millennium Bc

In a recent special issue of The Holocene, Miller et al. review the evidence for the spread of millet ( Panicum miliaceum and Setaria italica) across Eurasia. Among their arguments, they contend that millet cultivation came to Eurasian regions with hot, dry summers when irrigation was introduced, as part of a region-wide shift toward agricultural intensification in the first millennium BC. This hypothesis seems to align with the pattern of agricultural change observed in the Khorezm oasis, a Central Asian polity of the first millennium BC and first millennium AD. While we wholeheartedly accept this hypothesis for its explanatory value regarding trends across Eurasia, in this paper we nevertheless suggest that the introduction of millet to Central Asia needs further explication. Specifically, we seek to address the underlying assumption that this introduction was predicated upon centrally organized, state-level land development, increased sedentism, and the rise of Mesopotamian-style social complexity. We describe how millet cultivation in Khorezm was preceded by multi-resource strategies that included the cultivation of summer crops, and emphasize that this earlier history mattered significantly to the evolution of Khorezmian society and agriculture in the first millennium BC. In contrast to the imperial systems of West Asia, in Khorezm the introduction of complex irrigation works supported the expansion and greater stratification of pre-existing agropastoral lifeways, and helped to buttress the rise of nomadic elites within an agrarian zone. We believe the example of Khorezm is important because it helps to explain the emergence of integrated mobile-sedentist societies in the first millennium AD in Central Asia as a result of agricultural change. It also provides cultural and historical context to the spread of millet cultivation in the first millennium BC, suggesting that this phenomenon had significantly different implications for societies across Eurasia.

scholarly journals Chronology and Possible Links Between Climatic and Cultural Change During the First Millennium Bc in Southern Siberia and Central Asia

Radiocarbon ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 259-276 ◽  
Author(s):  
G I Zaitseva ◽  
B van Geel ◽  
N A Bokovenko ◽  
K V Chugunov ◽  
V A Dergachev ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Central Asia ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Cultural Change ◽  
Sediment Cores ◽  
Steppe Zone ◽  
Southern Siberia ◽  
Eurasian Steppe ◽  
First Millennium ◽  
Geochemical Analyses

We reconstructed climate change during the second half of the Holocene for the Minusinsk (southern Siberia) and the Uyuk (Central Asia) valleys in the Eurasian steppe zone. Sediment cores from 2 lakes and a soil profile from the Arzhan-2 burial mount were investigated. We combined pollen and geochemical analyses and radiocarbon dating with the archaeological record. A sharp increase of human population density occurred at the transition from the Bronze Age to Iron Age (about 2700 cal BP). The most representative Scythian culture started in the Uyuk and the Minusinsk valleys after increased humidity and occupation capacity of the steppe zone during the 9th century BC.

The Tibetan Dunhuang manuscripts in China

2002 ◽  
Vol 65 (1) ◽  
pp. 129-139
Author(s):  
SAM VAN SCHAIK
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Central Asia ◽  
Equal Size ◽  
First Millennium

Early in the twentieth century a hidden cache of manuscripts was discovered in the monastic cave complex of Dunhuang in Central Asia. The majority of the manuscripts, dating from the first millennium C.E., are in Chinese and Tibetan. The largest collections of Tibetan manuscripts from Dunhuang are in France and England. However, the fact that there are collections of almost equal size within China is hardly known outside of that country. In this article I report on the nature and size of these Chinese collections, and the results of my own examination of the collections in Dunhuang. This information largely completes the puzzle which was left to us after the dispersal of the manuscripts to various institutions, and allows us to attempt a reconstruction of the contents of the original ‘library’ of Tibetan manuscripts in the cave in Dunhuang.

scholarly journals Rapid intensity variations during the second half of the first millennium BCE in Central Asia and global implications.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raquel Bonilla-Alba ◽  
Miriam Gómez-Paccard ◽  
Francisco Javier Pavón-Carrasco ◽  
Elisabet Beamud ◽  
Verónica Martínez-Ferreras ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Dipole Moment ◽  
Central Asia ◽  
Central America ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Eastern Asia ◽  
Intensity Maximum ◽  
The Caucasus ◽  
Rates Of Change ◽  
First Millennium ◽  
Geomagnetic Models

<p>Recent archeomagnetic studies performed in different regions of the world have revealed unusual periods of sharp changes in intensity during the first millennium. Here we focus on the study of intensity variations between 600 BCE and 600 CE in central Asia, where an important intensity decrease seems to be present during the second half of the 1<sup>st</sup> millennium BCE. For this purpose, we present a new paleosecular variation (PSV) curve obtained from 51 new archeointensities and the selected previous data located within a radius of 1000 km around Termez (Uzbekistan). The new curve shows an intensity maximum around 400 BCE followed by a rapid decrease. When the virtual axial dipole moment (VADM) values are compared with the Dipole Moment estimations derived from different global geomagnetic models key differences are observed, suggesting an important non-dipolar effect for this feature. Finally, in order to constrain the spatial behaviour of this phenomenon and its global implications, we investigate the PSV intensity and VADM trends from twelve regions distributed among Central America, Europe and Asia. A VADM maximum is observed in Western Europe (Iberia and Germany) around 450 BCE, associated to rates of change of about 9 µT/century. This feature is also observed eastwards, in the Caucasus and the Levant, but associated to lower rates of changes. In Central Asia (Uzbekistan) our new study suggests that maximum values of about 14 µT/century, between 400-300 BCE, were achieved. In other regions, as Eastern Asia and Central America, rapid variations of the intensity are not observed during the targeted period.</p><p> </p>

The Russian Conquest of Central Asia

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Morrison
Keyword(s):  
Central Asia
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