Agro-Pastoral Strategies and Food Production on the Achaemenid Frontier in Central Asia: A Case Study of Kyzyltepa in Southern Uzbekistan

Abstract

This article discusses aspects of the agro-pastoral economy of Kyzyltepa, a late Iron Age or Achaemenid period (sixth-fourth century BC) site in the Surkhandarya region of southern Uzbekistan. The analysis integrates archaeobotanical and zooarchaeological analyses with textual references to food production and provisioning in order to examine local agro-pastoral strategies. Preliminary results suggest an economy that included both an intensive agricultural component, with summer irrigation of millet, and a wider-ranging market-oriented pastoral component that provided meat to the settlement.

Keywords:

• Achaemenid
• zooarchaeology
• archaeobotany
• Kyzyltepa
• agro-pastoralism