Pit-House Complexes: A New Form of Rural Domestic Architecture in Hellenistic and Post-Hellenistic Central Asia

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Advances and New Perspectives in Central Asian Archaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

To date studies of ancient Central Asian rural architecture are marked by an imbalance with much attention focused on the estates of elite landowners and less effective nods to non-elite pithouse structures. Recent excavations at Bashtepa in the Bukhara Oasis of Uzbekistan (2021) have revealed an intermediary form of domestic architecture for the Hellenistic and post-Hellenistic period (ca. fourth century BCE–first century CE) that integrates known aspects of both elite estates and simple non-elite structures. This distinctively well-preserved house is a multiroom courtyard-style pithouse complex currently unknown to other parts of Central Asia. This paper explores some results from these excavations related to the household archaeology of the complex as well as some novel architectonic principles utilized in its construction. It explores some elements of comparison with known ancient Central Asian rural house types as well as some ideas about the anomalous appearance of this new form in the Bukhara Oasis.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Advances and New Perspectives in Central Asian Archaeology   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36086.0