Agricultural Sustainability of the Otrar Oasis

Project principal investigator.

Katie Campbell is a research fellow on the King’s Silk Roads Programme, King’s College, University of Cambridge and a fellow of the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research. From 2022-24 she is also working with he Leverhulme- funded ‘Rivers of the Silk Roads’ project based at the University of Lincoln. Her research has focussed on the archaeological remains of large urban sites across Central Asia and the Caucasus, especially using them to understand periods of crisis such as the Mongol conquests of the early 13^th century.

Project co-investigator.

Serik Akylbek is the head of archaeology at archeoservice and the Otrar State Archaeological Museum, and a specialist in the archaeology of the Otrar Oasis.

Project co-investigator.

Ali Seraliyev is a PhD researcher at L.N. Gumilyov Eurasian National University in Astana, specialising on medieval settlement in the Otrar Oasis.

In the first year of the project,  we completed a five-week long excavation and survey season in September and October 2023. The team consisted of Dr Katie Campbell (King’s College, University of Cambridge), Serik Akylbek (Archeoservice, Otrar State Archaeological Museum), Dr Davit Naskidashvili (Tbilisi State University), Dr Karl Smith (University of Oxford), Ali Seraliyev (L.N. Gumilyov, Eurasian National University, Astana), Shinaz Almazuly (Archaeoservice, Otrar State Archaeological Museum) and students Vova Kenkadze, Vazha Chitaia (TSU) and Dinara Akylbek (Shymkent University). We were joined by James Thomas (University of Lincoln) who came to do soil salinity sampling at the site of Otrar and across the oasis.

The focus of the work was Otrartobe, the main urban site in the oasis, and its extensive suburbs. Karl Smith undertook geophysical survey using a gradiometer so that we could understand some of the material remains beneath the ground and target excavations appropriately at the large site. For this we focussed on various archaeological mounds within the suburbs, all of which proved to contain structures. We opened trenches on some of the most promising of these sites to target anomalies in the geophysics.

The main areas excavated included a substantial kiln which was found to be producing unglazed pottery in approximately the 14^th century. Extensive samples were taken from the lining and fill of the kiln to understand more about its use and date. The dumps around the kiln contained an enormous amount of pottery, which we had to collect in large sandbags rather than the standard plastic finds bags. Washing and recording this pottery was a challenging job, but enthusiastically completed by Vova, Vazha and Dinara.

We also investigated sites in the northern and eastern part of the suburbs. In the north, we had an interesting anomaly on the geophysics, within an area where the city wall appeared to have been diverted to avoid. A small trench was excavated in this area, which contained occupation evidence dating from approximately the 10^th-12^th century, including a drainage pipe made from reused pots. These were sampled and palynological analysis is ongoing thanks to Dr Maia Chichinadze at the Georgian National Museum, Tbilisi. The trench in the eastern suburb contained buildings dating to a similar period, and we hope to excavate these further in 2024. In addition, we excavated a section through the city’s defensive wall to gain an idea of its construction and dating, and two canals providing water to the city and its suburbs. Analysis of material from all of the trenches is ongoing and alongside ongoing collaborative work with the Leverhulme-funded ‘Rivers of the Silk Roads’ project, these results will provide an important insight into the changing agricultural economy and the city of Otrar.

2024-25 was the second year of a project to understand how the city of Otrar in southern Kazakhstan functioned agriculturally, the periods in which it thrived, and when and why it declined. A 5-week excavation season between 18th September and 24th October 2024, followed by analysis. Excavation focused on various trenches within the abandoned city to provide information about urban occupation and particularly the agricultural basis of the city’s economy and survival.

Two main trenches were excavated, with smaller investigations in 11 further trenches across the site. Trench OTR16 is a small mound of occupation located in the eastern suburb of the city. Initial excavations in 2023 indicated that it likely dates to the 12th century or earlier and so had potential to provide crucial pre-Mongol conquest (1220) data from the city. OTR23 is located on a mound next to the main canal which flows through the city’s western suburbs. Geophysical survey undertaken in 2023 indicated that there was likely dense occupation in this area, with inhabitants taking advantage of the fresh water flowing into this part of the city. The other trenches primarily targeted canals and fortification systems across the city’s suburb, and a small excavation was undertaken in OTR6, a deep trench on Otrar’s shahristan.

The excavations at OTR16 revealed a suburban settlement within the Otrar rabad which can be provisionally dated by pottery to the Qarakhanid period, likely the 10^th-11^th centuries. At least two phases of mudbrick buildings were discovered in the excavations. Within the buildings were an exceptional assemblage of Qarakhanid pottery as well as sophisticated waste and water management systems which were not fully excavated. In some sections, burnt deposits also provided the opportunity to collect charred seeds from floatation.

The other major trench, OTR23 also contained extensive occupation which from initial analysis appears to be from the Timurid period. It underlines the broad pattern of occupation we have observed at the site, with extensive activity in the northern and eastern suburbs up to around the 12^th century, and later, Mongol and Timurid activity in the south and west of the city. Samples recovered from this trench will provide further information about changing subsistence patterns between the Qarakhanid and Timurid periods.

Additional trenches have enormously improved our understanding of Otrar’s defences and water management systems. Several trenches were excavated to investigate the city’s canals and reservoirs and initial palaynological analysis of soil samples revered from canals, toilets and agricultural soils indicate that there is a good survival of pollen at the site and a wide range of both wild and domestic taxa present. The study was carried out by Maia Chichinadze at the Georgian National Museum, and we hope to build on these initial findings to get a sense of the vegetation in and around the city from approximately the Arab conquests to the Timurid period.

Analysis of the samples and archaeological records is also continuing, with two MPhil students from Cambridge helping to sort and identify archaeobotanical samples from Otrar. I also received the results of the initial round of C14 dating which indicate a range of archaeobotanical material from the 7^th-16^th centuries has so far been excavated during this phase of excavation at Otrar.