The late Bronze Age settlement of Saridjar (Tajikistan)

项目的科学方法最好归入聚落考古的标题下。前一个由DFG资助的项目的主要成果之一是在塔吉克斯坦西南部Jach Su河谷的Saridjar附近发现了一个青铜时代晚期定居点。这一发现具有重大意义，因为整个地区以前被认为是后新石器时代的氏族人不稳定的地区。该定居点将在历时两个月的四次田野运动中进行详细的考古研究。先前的研究表明，Saridjar的定居点可以追溯到公元前17世纪至15/14世纪。因此，占领的结束处于从青铜时代晚期到铁器时代早期的过渡时期，这是中亚文化史上具有决定性意义的分水岭之一。到目前为止，人们对这两个阶段之间的过渡完全不了解，因为这两个时期的考古遗迹在最基本的方面是不同的。更有趣的是，在Saridjar材料中可以看到过渡元素，这表明我们面临着物质文化的快速变化，现在可以第一次在考古完好的环境中记录下来。除了聚落遗迹，附近的墓地将使我们能够将研究扩展到自然人类学和埋葬习俗。该项目的目的是通过探索选定的生活和制造业地区以及葬礼遗迹，从根本上洞察公元前二千年中期左右的变革过程。为了详细监测经济领域的变化，将使用科学分析的幽灵，包括对动物骨骼、植物遗骸(包括植物石、粪球)的研究，以及对陶器和金属发现的成分研究。对人类骨骼的分析将提供有关营养和健康的数据，可能还会提供在定居点开展的活动范围的数据。在这一变化时期内，同位素可能会具体地告诉我们居住模式。该项目将在德国-塔吉克斯坦-俄罗斯合作框架内进行。

The projects scientific approach is best subsumed under the heading of settlement archaeology. One of the major results of the preceding DFG-funded project was the discovery of a Late Bronze Age settlement near Saridjar in the Jach Su valley of south-western Tajikistan. This discovery is of major importance, since the entire region was previously thought to be unsettled by post-Neolithic sedentists. The settlement shall be examined in detail archaeologically over the course of four field campaigns of two months each.Previous research has shown that the settlement of Saridjar dates from the 17th to 15th/14th centuries B.C. The end of occupation therefore falls in the transitional period from the Late Bronze to the Early Iron Age, one of the decisive watersheds in Central Asian cultural history. Up to now, the transition between the two stages is not understood at all, since the archaeological remains of the two periods differ in the most fundamental respects. It is the more interesting, that transitional elements can be seen in the Saridjar material, suggesting that we are facing a very rapid change of material culture which can be documented now for the first time in an archaeologically intact setting. In addition to the settlement remains, the nearby necropolis will enable us to extend our research to physical anthropology and burial customs.The aim of the project is to gain fundamental insight into the transformation processes at work around the mid-second millennium BC by exploring selected living and manufacturing areas as well as funerary remains. To monitor in detail changes to the economic sphere, a spectre of scientific analyses will be used, including the study of animal bones, botanical remains including phytoliths, faecal spherulites as well as compositional studies on pottery and metal finds. Analyses of human bones will provide data on nutrition and health, and possibly on the range of activities carried out at the settlement. Isotopes may specifically inform us on residential patterns within this period of change.The project will be carried out within the framework of a German-Tajik-Russian cooperation.