Nomad state formation and urbanization on the northern Silk Road: The early medieval town of Dzhankent (Aral Sea region, Kazakhstan)

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Heinrich Härke
• Subject Area: Prehistory and World Archaeology
• Term: from 2017 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 389351859

• Final Report Year: 2024

Final Report Abstract

This project has addressed the interaction of factors leading in the Early Middle Ages to the emergence of towns in a previously non-urbanized region of Central Asia. While Arabic written sources of the 10th century report Dzhankent (Turkic for ‘New Town’) on the lower Syr-darya as the capital of the Oguz (a federation of Turkic nomads), new archaeological evidence and C14 dates from the deserted town demonstrate a much earlier origin of the settlement: in the 6th century, very exactly the time when the Northern Silk Road started operating through this region. According to finds, there were soon contacts to the southern trading hub of Khwarazm on the Amu-darya. An intriguing find from this phase is the late 8th century skeleton of a domesticated cat, the first one known from this region. In the late 9th century, after the arrival of the Oguz and probably under their control, the settlement was rebuilt as a walled town on a Khwarazmian model, but without the monumental buildings one would expect in a ‘nomad capital’ of this period. In its new shape, Dzhankent existed for not much longer than a century, being a short-lived ‘boom town’ on the intersection of the Northern Silk road and the documented north-south trade corridor between Central Asia and northern Europe. Scientific analyses of samples from a curious annexe against the northern town wall suggest that this was at one time a slave pen, implying that Dzhankent may have played a role in the thriving slave trade of the period – and was then abandoned when that trade folded in the late 10th or early 11th century. It is hardly a coincidence that the historically documented ‘nomad state’ of the Oguz disintegrated at exactly that time. Environmental change may have been a contributing factor, but there is no solid evidence for that. The town’s history as it emerges from the results of our project and from the wider historical context highlights a n interplay of factors in the emergence of urbanism in this place: geography, trade, and population interactions.

Publications

• . Mittelalter anderswo: Die Stadtwüstung Dzhankent auf der nördlichen Seidenstraße. Informationen zur Archäologie des Mittelalters 18. 6-9. 2018
  Härke, H.
  
• The Patrimonial Project of Dzhankent. Ancient Civilizations from Scythia to Siberia, 24(1-2), 467-532.
  Arzhantseva, Irina & Gorshenina, Svetlana
  
• Am Südost-Horizont der Wikingerwelt. Die Seidenstraße. In: J. Staecker and M. Toplak (eds.). Die Wikinger: Entdecker und Eroberer. Berlin: Propyläen. 295-30 2. 2019
  Härke, H. & I. Arzhantseva
  
• Geoarchaeology at Dzhankent: Urbanization and state formation on the Northern Silk Road. In: G.M. Mutanov (ed.). Proceedings of the international conference “Methods and methodology of archaeological sciences in archaeological field research”, 18 September 2019, Al-Farabi National Kazakh University. Almaty: Kazakh Universiteti. 4-11.
  Arzhantseva, I.A., H. Härke & A.A. Tazhekeev
  
• Keramika so znakami s gorodishch Dzhankent i Sortobe. In: Margulanovskiye chteniya – 2019: Materialy mezhdunarodnoy arkheologicheskoy nauchno-prakticheskoy konferentsii, posvyashchayetsya 95-letiyu so dnya rozhdeniya vydayushchegosya kazakhstanskogo arkheologa K.A. Akisheva. Nur-Sultan. 418-428. 2019
  Amirgalina G.T.
  
• Nekotoryye itogi i perspektivy izucheniya gorodishcha Dzhankent. In: Velikaya step': istoriya i kul'tura. Tom 3. Mir drevnikh tyurkov (exhibition catalogue). Nur-Sultan
  Tazhekeev, A. A., I. A. Arzhantseva, G. Harke, S. U. Bilalov & G. T. Amirgalina
  
• PRELIMINARY RESULTS OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESEARCH THE WESTERN GATE OF THE MEDIEVAL SETTLEMENT DZHANKENT IN 2018. Journal of history, 93(2).
  Heinrich, Härke; Bilalov, S. & Amirgalina, G.
  
• Project “Nomad state formation and urbanization: The early medieval town of Dzhankent (aral Sea region, Kazakhstan)”. Problems of chronology and cultural genesis of ancient sedentary societies of Eurаsia (from the neolithic period through the Early Iron Age), 239-241. Institute for the History of Material Culture Russian Academy of Sciences.
  Arzhantseva, Irina; Haerke, Heinrich & Tazhekeev, Azilkhan
  
• Zhankent in the works of the Russian Empire researchers. In: I. Yilmazcelik and F. Demirel (eds.), Proceedings of the International Symposium on Political, Economic and Cultural Development of the Turkic World from the Beginning of the 20th Century to the Present Day, 24-27 April 2018, Almaty, Kazakhstan. Ankara: Atatürk Arastirma Merkezi. 290-313. 2019
  Bilalov, S.
  
• “The General and his Army”: Metropolitans and Locals on the Khorezmian Expedition. “Masters” and “Natives”, 137-174. De Gruyter.
  Arzhantseva, Irina & Härke, Heinrich
  
• Archaeological research on the main entrance gate of the medieval settlement Dzhankent in 2019. Journal of history, 96(1), 155-171.
  Bilalov, S. & Tazhekeyev, A.
  
• Arkheologicheskiye nakhodki s gorodishcha Dzhankent za polevoy sezon 2019 goda. In: Margulanovskiye chteniya – 2020: materialy mezhdunarodnoy nauchno-prakticheskoy konferentsii «Velikaya Step' v svete arkheologicheskikh i mezhdistsiplinarnykh issledovaniy» (g. Almaty, 17– 18 sentyabrya 2020 g.). Almaty: Institut arkheologii im. A.KH. Margulana. Vol. 2. 422-433
  Amirgalina G.T.
  
• Interdisciplinary fieldwork at Jankent: Exploring early medieval urbanization on the Lower Syrdaya. In: B. A. Baitanayev (ed.), Margulan Readings – 2020. 219-229
  Härke, H., I. A. Arzhantseva, A. A. Tazhekeev, M. Bronnikova, I. N. Modin & A.V. Panin
  
• The earliest domestic cat on the Silk Road. Scientific Reports, 10(1).
  Haruda, A. F.; Ventresca, Miller A. R.; Paijmans, J. L. A.; Barlow, A.; Tazhekeyev, A.; Bilalov, S.; Hesse, Y.; Preick, M.; King, T.; Thomas, R.; Härke, H. & Arzhantseva, I.
  
• The early medieval town of Dzhankent (Kazakhstan): from initial hypothesis to new model. The European Archaeologist 66. 27-34. 2020
  Härke, H., I.A. Arzhantseva & A. Tazhekeev
  
• The initial phase of the work of the Khorezm archaeological and ethnographic expedition in Kazakhstan (archives 1946–1951). In: B. A. Baitanayev (ed.), Margulan Readings – 2020: Proceedings of the International scientific and practical conference “Great Steppe in light of archaeological and interdisciplinary research” (Almaty, September 17–18, 2020). Vol. 1. Almaty: A.Kh. Margulan Institute of Archaeology (ISBN 978-601-7106-43-0). 67-80
  Arzhantseva, I. A.
  
• ж. далалық маусымында ортағасырлық Жанкент қаласында жүргізілген археологиялық жұмыстар. In: Тарих ғылымдарының докторы, профессор Мадияр Елеуұлы Елеуовтың 75 жылдық мерейтойына арналған «Ұлы Жібек жолы мен Қазақстан керуен жолдарының урбанизация үдерісіндегі маңызы» атты халықаралық далалық семинар материалдары. Алматы. 158-169
  Билалов С. Ө., Тәжекеев А. А., Дарменов Р. Т., Султанжанов Ж. К., Амиргалина Г. Т., Курманиязов И. С. & Назаров А. Ж.
  
• РАДИОУГЛЕРОДНОЕ ДАТИРОВАНИЕ И ПОЖАРНАЯ ИСТОРИЯ РАННЕСРЕДНЕВЕКОВОГО ГОРОДА ДЖАНКЕНТ (Ю-В ПРИАРАЛЬЕ, КАЗАХСТАН). Радиоуглерод в археологии и палеоэкологии: прошлое, настоящее, будущее. Материалы международной конференции, посвященной 80-летию старшего научного сотрудника ИИМК РАН, кандидата химических наук Ганны Ивановны Зайцевой, 17-18. Samara State University of Social Sciences and Education.
  Bronnikova, M.; Panin, A.; Arzhantseva, I.; Harke, H. & Karpova, Y.
  
• A REVIEW OF WRITTEN SOURCES ABOUT OGUZ CITIES IN KAZAKHSTAN’S SECTION OF THE GREAT SILK ROAD. Journal of history, 101(2).
  Shoraev, В. К. & Sultanzhanov, Zh. K.
  
• Interfaces and Crossroads, Contexts and Communications: Early Medieval Towns in the Syr-Darya Delta (Kazakhstan). Journal of Urban Archaeology, 3, 51-63.
  Härke, Heinrich & Arzhantseva, Irina
  
• Roundtable studying the Anthropocene in Central Asia: the challenge of sources and scales in human–environment relations. Central Asian Survey, 41(1), 180-203.
  Féaux, de la Croix Jeanne; Arzhantseva, Irina; Dağyeli, Jeanine; Dubuisson, Eva-Marie; Härke, Heinrich; Penati, Beatrice; Ueda, Akira & Wooden, Amanda
  
• ОРТАҒАСЫРЛЫҚ ЖАНКЕНТ ҚАЛАСЫНАН ТАБЫЛҒАН АСҮЙЛІК ЫДЫСТАРДЫҢ ЖІКТЕЛУІ. Al-Farabi Kazakh National University Bulletin of History 102. 120-129. 2021
  Amirgalina, G.T., L.A. Makhambetova & S.U. Bilalov
  
• A Dozen Years of Central Asia: an archaeologist’s blog. Kulturní studia, 2022(1), 57-80.
  Härke, Heinrich
  
• Micromorphological features of medieval cultural layers formed in different environmental backgrounds. Boletín de la Sociedad Geológica Mexicana, 74(3), A080822.
  Bronnikova, Maria A.; Karpova, Julia O.; Murasheva, Veronika V.; Kochkina, Anna F.; Stashenkov, Dmitry A.; Arzhantseva, Irina A. & Härke, Heinrich
  
• On archaeological exploration work carried out in the vicinity of the medieval settlement Zhankent in 2019 and 2022. Kazakhstan Arkheologiyasy 17: 3. 91-102. 2022
  Tazhekeev, A. & Zh. Sultanzhanov
  
• On the interface of steppe and urban civilization: Interdisciplinary research at Dzhankent (6th – 11th centuries AD). In: A. Onggar et al. (eds.), Eurasian steppe civilization: human and historical and cultural environment. Proceedings of the 5th International Congress of Archaeology of the Eurasian Steppes (Turkistan, 11-14 October, 2022). Vol. 3. Almaty: Margulan Institute of Archaeology, 111-120. ISBN 978-601-7106-64-5
  H. Haerke, I. Arzhantseva, A. Tazhekeev, M. Bronnikova, A. Panin & I. Modin
  
• There used to be water. Environmental Humanities in Central Asia, 31-54. Routledge.
  Arzhantseva, Irina Arkadevna & Härke, Heinrich