Timirud Period Rural Settlement in the Sar-o-Tar Desert, Afghanistan

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Archaeologists generally recreate settlement patterns based on vestigial remains of rural landscapes destroyed by later settlement, agricultural activity, or environmental degradation. The 14th and 15th century Timurid settlement of the Sar-o-Tar plain, east of the lower Helmand River in southwest Afghanistan, is a notable exception. Dry desert conditions allowed for occupation only during times when the extensive canal system, first developed 2500 years earlier, could be reexcavated and maintained. These same desert conditions—and intensive sanding that filled the empty buildings-- prevented later agricultural activity, pluvial erosion, and even limited site looting in the six centuries after the area was abandoned. Thus, we have as close to a pristine environment from the 15th century CE as archaeology has had the opportunity to study. The 1000 square km is filled with almost untouched medieval houses, some standing three stories high, fortresses, mosques, mausoleums, canals, even field walls. The Helmand Sistan Project, working in this region in the 1970s, documented the Timurid remains of Sar-o-Tar through survey and limited excavation. This paper will summarize our findings of the Timurid period in Sar-o-Tar and suggest some general themes that may assist archaeologists working in less visible rural environments.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

Keywords

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 25403