Uzbekistan
The Bash Tepa Project
The fortified site of Bash Tepa was occupied in the late first millennium B.C., and would have rested on the edge of the Bukhara Oasis at that time. The site would have looked out over an expansive desert, but was likely surrounded by wetlands and lakes, all of which dried up more than two millennia ago as the oasis waters changed distribution. Excavations at Bash Tepa were conducted from 2015 to 2021 under the directorship of Soren Stark from New York University. Dr. Spengler joined the team in 2015, 2016, and 2017, collecting archaeobotanical samples.
In studying this process, Dr. Spengler was exploring links between the intensification of agriculture and increased exchange, population growth, craft specialization, and the development of an elite class. The long-held model for paleoeconomy in Central Asia suggests that a dramatic cultural shift occurred during the mid-first millennium B.C. Academics often portray this change as a marked switch to a highly specialized pastoralist economy and often claim that it was driven by climatic changes. The Bash Tepa study identified clear evidence of an agropastoral occupation in the oasis, and some of the earliest evidence in Central Asia for crops like rice and cotton.
With increasing archaeobotanical investigation in the mountains of eastern Central Asia, it is becoming clear that the situation is far more complicated than this model implies. The archaeological data reveal evidence of intensified agriculture, including multiple crops with distinct growing seasons and varying labor inputs (effectively staggered labor demands), likely irrigated fields, and viticulture. Agropastoralists at these sites grew free-threshing wheat, hulled barley, broomcorn and foxtail millet, and grapes. Our understanding of social developments across Central Asia is currently undergoing a reevaluation, and further archaeobotanical investigations may reveal that pastoral specialization occurred in some areas. Still, it is clear that cereals were integral to the economy, and people invested significant amounts of time in farming.
The Bukhara Project
The ancient city of Bukhara, situated in the Bukhara Oasis, was a key hub in the Silk Road trading network and the central capital of the Qarakhanid Empire. While the city was destroyed in 1220 by the Mongols, it was reoccupied in the same location, due to the limited space available in the oasis. Given that there has been a continual occupation overlaying the ancient city, it is particularly difficult to get to the site to conduct research. However, in 2019, a rescue project was started at the site that involved a large collaborative network of scholars. Dr. Soren Stark assembled this team and coordinated the excavations. Dr. Spengler joined the project in 2021, and members of the Spengler Lab have been conducting archaeobotanical studies on material collected from the site in 2019, 2021, and 2022. The excavations at Bukhara are ongoing.
The archaeobotanical studies at Bukhara have provided the most impressive look into medieval agriculture and trade in Central Asia, thus far revealed (Mir Mukhamad et al. 2021, 2023a, 2023b). Material from the site is helping members of the Spengler Lab study the spread of cotton, pistachios (Mir Mukhamad et al. 2022), rice (Spengler et al. 2021), plums (Dal Martello et al. 2022), apples, peaches, and a wide range of other crops. Additionally, the microfauna recovered from these studies are helping to construct a narrative for the spread of the chicken along the Silk Road, as well as rats and other commensals. In particular, cesspits at the site have provided unparalleled preservation conditions, with beautifully mineralized remains.
The Paykand Project
Excavations at the ancient urban center of Paykend have been ongoing for more than a decade, and continue under the directorship of Andrey Omelchenko of the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg. Dr. Spengler, with members of his team, joined excavations at Paykend in 2019 and collected two sets of samples. The main set originated from a Silk Road caravanserai situated near the ancient site of Paykend, which was inhabited during the tenth and eleventh centuries A.D. The caravanserai had been excavated over a several-year period, leaving open trenches and exposed hearths in many of the rooms. These excavations were run by Sirodj Mirzaahmedov of the Institute of Archaeology in Samarkand.
The other set of samples came from the core areas of the citadel, where ongoing excavations through the Hermitage were exposing new contexts dating back to the earliest construction of the citadel, around the fourth century B.C. These data have provided a wonderful array of material, as presented by Mir Makhamad et al. (2021). Additionally, these data have provided important clues to better understand the origins and dispersal of crops, such as cotton, pistachios (Mir Makhamad et al. 2023), and rice (Spengler et al. 2021).
Organized trade, including military outposts and government taxation, along the Silk Road dates back to the Han dynasty in the second century B.C. However, the exchange of goods, ideas, cultural practices, and genes, spanning the thousands of kilometers of desert and mountainous expanses that comprise this region, dates back to at least the third millennium B.C.
The flow of cultural traits through Central Asia over the past four and a half millennia was a significant driving force in the development of cultures across the Old World, shaping cuisines worldwide. With the increasing application of modern scientific archaeology, specifically archaeobotanical methods, in Central Asia over the past decade, the importance of farming to past peoples of eastern Central Asia is becoming clear. In addition, the spread of specific crops and crop varieties through the mountain valleys of Central Asia directly altered farming systems across Europe and Asia, introducing crops, such as millet, to Europe and wheat to China. Archaeobotanically tracing the path that plants followed on their long journey across Central Asia helps us understand how these foods ultimately reached your dinner plates today.
The Tashbulak Project
In 2013, Michael Frachetti of Washington University in St Louis identified a medieval village site in the Pamir Mountains of Uzbekistan while running an archaeological survey. Dr. Spengler joined excavations at that site in 2014 and 2015, collecting archaeobotanical samples. The data that resulted from these collaborations provided the first glimpse into the rich array of archaeobotanical materials that could be recovered from medieval sites in Central Asia. Spengler identified an astonishing array of fruit crops that must have been carried up to the medieval village from the river valleys below, as the high-elevation site could not have supported many of the crops. This study identified a range of materials, including Russian olive pits, peaches, walnuts, pistachios, cotton seeds, and rice (Spengler et al. 2019).
