Tazabagyab culture

Tazabagyab culture
Geographical range	Lower Amu Darya
Period	Late Bronze Age
Dates	ca. 1850–1500 BC
Preceded by	Kelteminar culture ; Andronovo culture ; Suyarganovo culture (in lower Amu Darya river); Zamanbaba culture (in lower Zeravshan river)
Followed by	Amirabad culture; Begazy–Dandybai culture (in lower Amu Darya river)

Last updated August 31, 2024

The Tazabagyab culture is from the late Bronze Age, ca. 1850 BC to 1500 BC,^[1] and flourished in the lower Zeravshan valley, as well as along the lower Amu Darya towards the south shore of the Aral Sea; this last region is known as Khwarazm or Khorezm. Earlier it was thought to be from ca. 1500 BC to 1100 BC and regarded a southern offshoot of the Andronovo culture, composed of Indo-Iranians,^[2] but Stanislav Grigoriev, in a recent study asserts that Tazabagyab is not part of the Andronovo cultural horizon.^[3]

Origins

The Tazabagyab culture emerged in the lower Zeravshan valley and lower Amu Darya around 1850 BC,^[1] earlier thought to be a southern variant of the Andronovo culture,^[4]^[5]^[6] but now considered an independent culture.^[3] Unlike the Andronovo peoples further to the north, who were largely pastoral, the people of the Tazabagyab culture were largely agricultural.^[2]

Mallory/Adams (1997) described that they were descended from Indo-Iranian steppe herders from the north, who would have spread southwards and established agricultural communities.^[2]

Tazabagyab culture's sites located in the Amu Darya delta formed a border zone, between Andronovo and Srubnaya steppe cultures in the north, and southern oasis cultures of Central Asia, during the Late Bronze Age. The burial site in Kokcha 3, located near Sultanuizdag mountain, around 250 km to the south of Aral Sea, is the largest cemetery excavated until now.^[7]

Characteristics

Location of Zeravshan river as tributary of Amu Darya Amudaryamap.jpg — Location of Zeravshan river as tributary of Amu Darya

Tazabagyab settlements show evidence of small-scale irrigation agriculture.^[5] About fifty settlements have been discovered.^[8] These contained subterranean rectangular houses, usually three per village.^[8] Tazabagyav houses are generally large, some being more than 10 x 10 m in dimensions. They are built of clay and the reeds are supported by timber posts. Ca. 100 individuals, belonging to around ten families,^[5] would have inhabited a Tazabagyav village. Figurines and remains of horses have been found.^[2]

In Tazabagyav burials, males are buried on their left, while females are buried on their right. This is similar to contemporary Indo-European cultures in the region, such as the Andronovo culture,^[5] Bishkent culture, the Swat culture and the Vakhsh culture,^[2] and the earlier Corded Ware culture of central and eastern Europe.^[9]^[10]^[11] This practice has been identified as a typical Indo-Iranian tradition.^[12]

Metal objects of the Tazabagyab culture are similar to those of the Andronovo culture in Kazakhstan, and of the Srubnaya culture further west.^[2] Archaeological evidence show that Tazabagyab settlements included metal-working craftsmen.^[8]

Its ceramics were of the Namazga VI type which was common throughout Central Asia at the time.^[2] Tazabagyav pottery appears throughout a wide area.^[6]

The Tazabagyab people appears to have controlled the trade in minerals such as copper, tin and turquoise, and pastoral products such as horses, dairy and leather. This must have given them great political power in the old oasis towns of the Bactria–Margiana Archaeological Complex. Their mastery of chariot warfare must have given them military control. This probably encouraged social, political and also military integration.^[13]

Successors

David W. Anthony suggests that Tazabagyav culture might have been a predecessor of early Indo-Aryan peoples such as the compilers of the Rigveda and the Mitanni.^[13]

Related Research Articles

The Indo-Iranian languages constitute the largest and southeasternmost extant branch of the Indo-European language family. They include over 300 languages, spoken by around 1.5 billion speakers, predominantly in South Asia, West Asia and parts of Central Asia.

The Corded Ware culture comprises a broad archaeological horizon of Europe between c. 3000 BC – 2350 BC, thus from the late Neolithic, through the Copper Age, and ending in the early Bronze Age. Corded Ware culture encompassed a vast area, from the contact zone between the Yamnaya culture and the Corded Ware culture in south Central Europe, to the Rhine in the west and the Volga in the east, occupying parts of Northern Europe, Central Europe and Eastern Europe. Autosomal genetic studies suggest that the Corded Ware culture originated from the westward migration of Yamnaya-related people from the steppe-forest zone into the territory of late Neolithic European cultures, evolving in parallel with the Yamnaya, with no evidence of direct male-line descent between them.

Khwarazm or Chorasmia is a large oasis region on the Amu Darya river delta in western Central Asia, bordered on the north by the (former) Aral Sea, on the east by the Kyzylkum Desert, on the south by the Karakum Desert, and on the west by the Ustyurt Plateau. It was the center of the Iranian Khwarezmian civilization, and a series of kingdoms such as the Afrighid dynasty and the Anushtegin dynasty, whose capitals were Kath, Gurganj and—from the 16th century on—Khiva. Today Khwarazm belongs partly to Uzbekistan and partly to Turkmenistan.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bactria–Margiana Archaeological Complex</span> c. 2250–1700 BC Central Asian archaeological culture

The Bactria–Margiana Archaeological Complex (BMAC) is the modern archaeological designation for a particular Middle Bronze Age civilisation of southern Central Asia, also known as the Oxus Civilization. The civilisation's urban phase or Integration Era, was dated in 2010 by Sandro Salvatori to c. 2400–1950 BC, but a different view is held by Nadezhda A. Dubova and Bertille Lyonnet, c. 2250–1700 BC.

The Yamnaya culture or the Yamna culture, also known as the Pit Grave culture or Ochre Grave culture, is a late Copper Age to early Bronze Age archaeological culture of the region between the Southern Bug, Dniester, and Ural rivers, dating to 3300–2600 BCE. It was discovered by Vasily Gorodtsov following his archaeological excavations near the Donets River in 1901–1903. Its name derives from its characteristic burial tradition: Я́мная is a Russian adjective that means 'related to pits ', as these people used to bury their dead in tumuli (kurgans) containing simple pit chambers. Research in recent years has found that Mikhaylovka, in lower Dnieper river, Ukraine, formed the Core Yamnaya culture.

The Karasuk culture describes a group of late Bronze Age societies who ranged from the Aral Sea to the upper Yenisei in the east and south to the Altai Mountains and the Tian Shan in ca. 1500–800 BC.

The Andronovo culture is a collection of similar local Late Bronze Age cultures that flourished c. 2000–1150 BC, spanning from the southern Urals to the upper Yenisei River in central Siberia. Some researchers have preferred to term it an archaeological complex or archaeological horizon. The slightly older Sintashta culture, formerly included within the Andronovo culture, is now considered separately to Early Andronovo cultures. Andronovo culture's first stage could have begun at the end of the 3rd millennium BC, with cattle grazing, as natural fodder was by no means difficult to find in the pastures close to dwellings.

The Srubnaya culture, also known as Timber-grave culture, was a Late Bronze Age 1900–1200 BC culture in the eastern part of the Pontic–Caspian steppe. It is a successor of the Yamna culture, the Catacomb culture and the Poltavka culture. It is co-ordinate and probably closely related to the Andronovo culture, its eastern neighbor. Whether the Srubnaya culture originated in the east, west, or was a local development, is disputed among archaeologists.

The Catacomb culture was a Bronze Age culture which flourished on the Pontic steppe in 2,500–1,950 BC.

Potapovka culture was a Bronze Age culture which flourished on the middle Volga in 2100—1800 BC.

Poltavka culture was an early to middle Bronze Age archaeological culture which flourished on the Volga-Ural steppe and the forest steppe in 2800—2100 BCE.

The Abashevo culture is a late Middle Bronze Age archaeological culture, ca. 2200–1850 BC, found in the valleys of the middle Volga and Kama River north of the Samara bend and into the southern Ural Mountains. It receives its name from the village of Abashevo in Chuvashia.

The Fatyanovo–Balanovo culture was a Chalcolithic and early Bronze Age culture within the wider Corded Ware complex which flourished in the forests of Russia from c. 2900 to 2050 BC.

The Indo-Aryan migrations were the migrations into the Indian subcontinent of Indo-Aryan peoples, an ethnolinguistic group that spoke Indo-Aryan languages. These are the predominant languages of today's Bangladesh, Maldives, Nepal, North India, Eastern Pakistan, and Sri Lanka.

The Yaz culture was an early Iron Age culture of Margiana, Bactria and Sogdia. It emerges at the top of late Bronze Age sites (BMAC), sometimes as mud-brick platforms and sizeable houses associated with irrigation systems. Ceramics were mostly hand-made, but there was increasing use of wheel-thrown ware. Bronze and iron arrowheads, also iron sickles and carpet knives among other artifacts have been found.

The Sintashta culture is a Middle Bronze Age archaeological culture of the Southern Urals, dated to the period c. 2200–1900 BCE. It is the first phase of the Sintashta–Petrovka complex, c. 2200–1750 BCE. The culture is named after the Sintashta archaeological site, in Chelyabinsk Oblast, Russia, and spreads through Orenburg Oblast, Bashkortostan, and Northern Kazakhstan. Widely regarded as the origin of the Indo-Iranian languages, whose speakers originally referred to themselves as the Aryans, the Sintashta culture is thought to represent an eastward migration of peoples from the Corded Ware culture.

The Indo-European migrations are hypothesized migrations of Proto-Indo-European language (PIE) speakers, and subsequent migrations of people speaking derived Indo-European languages, which took place approx. 4000 to 1000 BCE, potentially explaining how these languages came to be spoken across a large area of Eurasia, spanning from the Indian subcontinent and Iranian plateau to Atlantic Europe, in a process of cultural diffusion.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Suyarganovo culture</span> Archaeological culture of the Bronze Age

The Suyarganovo culture was an archaeological culture of the late Bronze Age, appearing at the beginning of the second millennium BC, extending to around 1000 BC. The population of Suyarganovo culture, also known as Suyargan culture, lived in Aral, near Akcha Darya river, the area of the historic Khwarezm. Stanislav Grigoriev (2016) suggests Suyarganovo culture began sometime around 2500-2000 BC.

The Vakhsh culture is a Bronze Age culture which took place around 2500-1650 BC, as shown by radiocarbon dates, and flourished along the lower Vakhsh River in southern Tajikistan, earlier thought to be from ca. 1700 BC to 1500 BC.

The Qäwrighul culture is a late Bronze Age culture which flourished along the Kongque River in Xinjiang from ca. 2100 BC to 1500 BC, and is one of the cultures of the Tarim mummies. It is considered as part of the Xiaohe culture, with its Xiaohe cemetery slightly to the south.

References

1 2 Garner, Jennifer, (2020). "Metal sources (tin and copper) and the BMAC", in The World of the Oxus Civilization, Chapter 28, Routledge, Table 28.1: "Andronovo-Tazabag'jab, 1850-1500 BC (after Parzinger and Boroffka 2003: 280, fig. 1)"
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Mallory & Adams 1997, pp. 566–567.
1 2 Grigoriev, Stanislav, (2021). "Andronovo Problem: Studies of Cultural Genesis in the Eurasian Bronze Age", in Open Archaeology 2021 (7), p.5: "...In western literature, for example, the Tazabagyab culture of the southern Aral Sea region is sometimes viewed as a variant of the Andronovo culture (Mallory & Adams, 1997, p. 566). But experts on the Andronovo culture do not consider Tazabagyab as Andronovo..." .
↑ Mallory & Adams 1997, p. 20.
1 2 3 4 Mallory 1991, p. 230.
1 2 Anthony 2010, p. 452.
↑ Schreiber, Finn, (2022). "Social and chronological aspects of the Late Bronze age burial site of Kokcha 3 (Uzbekistan)", in Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, Volume 44, Abstract: "The Amu-Darya Delta (ancient Khwarazm, modern Uzbekistan) was a borderland between northern steppe-based Andronovo-Srubnaya groups and southern oasis cultures in the Late Bronze Age. The local sites are known as the Tazabag'yab culture, of which Kokcha 3 is the largest excavated burial site."
1 2 3 Masson 1992, p. 350.
↑ Mallory & Adams 1997, p. 68.
↑ Mallory & Adams 1997, p. 589.
↑ Mallory 1991, p. 244.
↑ Mallory & Adams 1997, p. 558.
1 2 Anthony 2010, pp. 453–454.

Bibliography

Anthony, David W. (2010) [2007]. The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-1-4008-3110-4.
Mallory, J. P. (1991). In Search of the Indo-Europeans: Language Archeology and Myth. Thames & Hudson.
Mallory, J. P.; Adams, Douglas Q. (1997). "Tazabagyab Culture". Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture. Taylor & Francis. pp. 566–567. ISBN 1884964982.
Masson, V. M. [in French] (1992). "The Decline of the Bronze Age Civilization and Movements of the Tribes". In Dani, A. H.; Masson, V. M. [in French] (eds.). History of Civilizations of Central Asia: The Dawn of Civilization. Vol. 1. UNESCO. pp. 337–431. ISBN 9231027190.