Sogdia or Sogdiana was an ancient Iranian civilization between the Amu Darya and the Syr Darya, and in present-day Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan. Sogdiana was also a province of the Achaemenid Empire, and listed on the Behistun Inscription of Darius the Great. Sogdiana was first conquered by Cyrus the Great, the founder of the Achaemenid Empire, and then was annexed by the Macedonian ruler Alexander the Great in 328 BC. It would continue to change hands under the Seleucid Empire, the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom, the Kushan Empire, the Sasanian Empire, the Hephthalite Empire, the Western Turkic Khaganate and the Muslim conquest of Transoxiana.
The Wusun were an ancient semi-nomadic steppe people mentioned in Chinese records from the 2nd century BC to the 5th century AD.
The Saka, Shaka, or Sacae were a group of nomadic Eastern Iranian peoples who historically inhabited the northern and eastern Eurasian Steppe and the Tarim Basin.
The Yuezhi (Chinese: 月氏; pinyin: Yuèzhī, Ròuzhī or Rùzhī; Wade–Giles: Yüeh4-chih1, Jou4-chih1 or Ju4-chih1;) were an ancient people first described in Chinese histories as nomadic pastoralists living in an arid grassland area in the western part of the modern Chinese province of Gansu, during the 1st millennium BC. After a major defeat at the hands of the Xiongnu in 176 BC, the Yuezhi split into two groups migrating in different directions: the Greater Yuezhi (Dà Yuèzhī 大月氏) and Lesser Yuezhi (Xiǎo Yuèzhī 小月氏). This started a complex domino effect that radiated in all directions and, in the process, set the course of history for much of Asia for centuries to come.
Zhang Qian was a Chinese diplomat, explorer, and politician who served as an imperial envoy to the world outside of China in the late 2nd century BC during the Western Han dynasty. He was one of the first official diplomats to bring back valuable information about Central Asia, including the Greco-Bactrian remains of the Macedonian Empire as well as the Parthian Empire, to the Han dynasty imperial court, then ruled by Emperor Wu of Han.
The Indo-Parthian Kingdom was a Parthian kingdom founded by Gondophares, and active from 19 CE to c. 226 CE. At their zenith, they ruled an area covering parts of eastern Iran, various parts of Afghanistan and the northwest regions of the Indian subcontinent. The rulers may have been members of the House of Suren, and the kingdom has even been called the "Suren Kingdom" by some authors.
Indo-Scythians were a group of nomadic Iranian peoples of Scythian origin who migrated from Central Asia southward into the northwestern Indian subcontinent, precisely into the modern-day South Asian regions of Afghanistan, Pakistan and northern India. The migrations persisted from the middle of the 2nd century BCE to the 4th century CE.
Dayuan is the Chinese exonym for a country that existed in Ferghana valley in Central Asia, described in the Chinese historical works of Records of the Grand Historian and the Book of Han. It is mentioned in the accounts of the Chinese explorer Zhang Qian in 130 BCE and the numerous embassies that followed him into Central Asia. The country of Dayuan is generally accepted as relating to the Ferghana Valley, controlled by the Hellenistic polis Alexandria Eschate, which can probably be understood as "Greco-Fergana city-state" in English language.
Sampul tapestry is an ancient woolen wall-hanging found at the Tarim Basin settlement of Sampul in Lop County, Hotan Prefecture, Xinjiang, China, close to the ancient city of Khotan. The object has many Hellenistic period features, including a Greek centaur and diadem, linking it to the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom. It may represent a Yuezhi soldier, in red jacket and trousers, from the 1st century CE. Alternatively, the soldier (king) is possibly a Greco-Bactrian, an Hellenized Saka or a Greco-Saka military aristocrat. The man's head features and the spear representation are modeled similarly with the depiction of Alexander the Great on a medallion found from Roman Egypt and could represent the king. Overall, the Sampul tapestry belongs to the Greco-Bactrian culture.
Kangju was the Chinese name of a kingdom in Central Asia during the first half of the first millennium CE. The name Kangju is now generally regarded as a variant or mutated form of the name Sogdiana. According to contemporaneous Chinese sources, Kangju was the second most powerful state in Transoxiana, after the Yuezhi. Its people, known in Chinese as the Kāng (康), were evidently of Indo-European origins, spoke an Eastern Iranian language, and had a semi-nomadic way of life. The Sogdians may have been the same people as those of Kangju and closely related the Sakas, or other Iranian groups such as the Asii.
The Noin-Ula burial site consist of more than 200 large burial mounds, approximately square in plan, some 2 m in height, covering timber burial chambers. They are located by the Selenga River in the hills of northern Mongolia north of Ulaan Baatar in Batsumber sum of Tov Province. They were excavated in 1924–1925 by Pyotr Kozlov, who found them to be the tombs of the aristocracy of the Xiongnu; one is an exceptionally rich burial of a historically known ruler of the Xiongnu, Wuzhuliu, who died in 13 CE. Most of the objects from Noin-Ula are now in the Hermitage Museum in Russia, while some artifacts unearthed later by Mongolian archaeologists are on display in the National Museum of Mongolian History, Ulaan Baatar. Two kurgans contained lacquer cups inscribed with Chinese characters believed to be the names of Chinese craftsmen, and dated September 5 year of Tsian-ping era, i.e. 2nd year BCE.
Khalchayan is an archaeological site, thought to be a small palace or a reception hall, located near the modern town of Denov in Surxondaryo Region of southern Uzbekistan. It is located in the valley of the Surkhan Darya, a northern tributary of the Oxus.
Takht-i Sangin is an archaeological site located near the confluence of the Vakhsh and Panj rivers, the source of the Amu Darya, in southern Tajikistan. During the Hellenistic period it was a city in the Greco-Bactrian kingdom with a large temple dedicated to the Oxus, which remained in use in the following Kushan period, until the third century AD. The site may have been the source of the Oxus Treasure.
The Greco-Bactrian Kingdom or simply Greco-Bactria was a Hellenistic-era Greek state, and along with the Indo-Greek Kingdom, the easternmost part of the Hellenistic world in Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent. It was founded in 256 BC by the Seleucid satrap Diodotus I Soter and lasted until its fall c. 120 BC with some cities still controlled by Greek kings such as Hermaeus Soter in what is today Kabul. It was ruled by the Diodotid dynasty and the rival Euthydemid dynasty.
Central Asian art is visual art created in Central Asia, in areas corresponding to modern Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and parts of modern Mongolia, China and Russia. The art of ancient and medieval Central Asia reflects the rich history of this vast area, home to a huge variety of peoples, religions and ways of life. The artistic remains of the region show a remarkable combinations of influences that exemplify the multicultural nature of Central Asian society. The Silk Road transmission of art, Scythian art, Greco-Buddhist art, Serindian art and more recently Persianate culture, are all part of this complicated history.
Galina Anatolyevna Pugachenkova was a Soviet archaeologist and art historian, regarded as a founder of Uzbek archaeology and central to the progression of archaeology and art history under Soviet regimes. Her work has contributed greatly to the register of surviving buildings in Central Asia and in many cases was the first register of traditional surviving buildings. Pugachenkova directed a branch of the archaeological expedition of southern Turkmenistan from 1946 to 1961, and of the Uzbek historical-artistic expedition from 1959 to 1984.
The Saksanokhur gold buckle is an ancient belt buckle in gold repoussé, discovered in the Hellenistic archaeological site of Saksanokhur, South Tajikistan. The plate represents a nomadic horserider spearing a boar, set within a rectangular decorative frame. The buckle is generally dated to the 1st-2nd century CE, although Francfort dates it earlier to the 2nd-1st century BCE, as do the curators for the Guimet Museum, and the National Museum of Antiquities of Tajikistan.
Tongtiandong is an archaeological site in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region of China, just to the south of the Altai mountains. The site had hunter-foraging human activity circa 40,000 BP.
The Acrobats (百戏俑) are a series of terracotta sculptures from pit K9901 of the Mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor Qin Shihuang. They are famous for their naturalism, and the artistic understanding of human anatomy that they represent. Because of this, they are at the center of academic attention regarding the possible local and foreign influences that led to their creation, and beyond them, to the creation of the Terracotta Army. In particular, the 1999 discovery of The Acrobats by Duan Qingbo, Chief archaeologist of the Mausoleum from 1998 to 2008, led to his proposal that West Asian cultures, and particularly Hellenistic art, possibly influenced the works of the first Qin Emperor.
The Tianshanbeilu culture, also named Linya, Yalinban or Yamansukuang, is an ancient Bronze Age age culture centered around the Tianshanbeilu cemetery in the region of Hami. The Tianshanbeilu culture played an important role in connecting the Hexi Corridor with the Tianshan Corridor. The cemetery remained in use until 1093–707 cal BCE. Tianshanbeilu is the largest Bronze Age site in eastern Xinjiang.
