Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: The Ancient Murghab Archaeology Project: Perspectives on Bronze Age Interaction in southern Turkmenistan

Washington University, Saint Louis MO

Investigators

Abstract

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.