Interdisciplinary fieldwork at Jankent: Exploring early medieval urbanization on the lower Syrdarya.

P. 219–229.

Arzhantseva I., Haerke H. G., Панин А., Тажекеев А. А., Бронникова М. А., Модин И. Н.

Our project at Dzhankent/Jankent addresses the origins and development of a town in the first millennium AD in the eastern Aral Sea region. In its current format, the project has been run since 2011 in collaboration of the University of Kyzylorda (Kazakhstan), the University of Tübingen (Germany) and the Russian Academy of Sciences (Moscow). Key questions of our work relate to the factors that may have had an influence on the process of urbanization: multi-ethnic population, economic and environmental change, trade on the Northern Silk Road, and the presumed state formation of the Turkic Oguz nomads. These issues are explored with an interdisciplinary methodology which, in addition to conventional archaeological excavation, includes a range of disciplines and approaches such as geophysics, geomorphology, pedology, zooarchaeology, stable isotopes from animal bones, and the analysis of ceramic materials. The results so far are challenging old and new hypotheses about the ‘marsh town’ of Jankent.

Keywords: Казахстан, Kazakhstan, геоархеология, Eastern Aral Sea region, Восточное Приаралье

In book

Маргулановские чтения-2020. Материалы международной научно-практической конференции «Великая Степь в свете археологических и междисциплинарных исследований» (г. Алматы, 17–18 сентября 2020 г.).

Arzhantseva I. Т. 1. , Институт археологии им. А. Х. Маргулана, 2020.