Preliminary Results of Skeletal Analysis from the Early Muslim Period Cemetery of Bukhara (Uzbekistan)

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Bukhara (in modern Uzbekistan) was a center of learning, power, and innovation during the “Lost Enlightenment” of the late first and early second millennium CE in Central Asia. At the same time, the metropolis faced crises familiar to city-dwellers today, such as controversial land use policies and outbreaks of infectious disease. In the summer of 2022, the Uzbek-American Expedition to Bukhara excavated a cemetery dated to the ninth to fourteenth centuries, revealing new evidence for life in the medieval city. Skeletons from this excavation (n = 57) are the first to be analyzed from this context, due to continuous site occupation. Preliminary results indicate the presence among the deceased of infectious disease, artificial cranial deformation, metal bodily ornamentation, and sharp force trauma on the lower limbs, possibly indicating horse-mounted combat. Styles of interment varied within the cemetery. Furthermore, the deceased represented every age cohort (from neonatal to old adult) and both sexes (and individuals of indeterminate sex). This data provides a new means to study the history of Bukhara through bioarchaeological investigation. This presentation includes photos of real human skeletal remains.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 37672.0