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Concept
Yaz culture
Summary
The Yaz culture (named after the type site Yaz-Tappe, Yaz Tepe, or Yaz Depe, near Baýramaly, Turkmenistan) was an early Iron Age culture of Margiana, Bactria and Sogdia (1500–500 BC, or 1500–330 BC). It emerges at the top of late Bronze Age sites (BMAC), sometimes as stone towers and sizeable houses associated with irrigation systems. Ceramics were mostly hand-made, but there was increasing use of wheel-thrown ware. There have been found bronze or iron arrowheads, also iron sickles or carpet knives among other artifacts.
With the farming citadels, steppe-derived metallurgy and ceramics, and absence of burials it has been regarded as a likely archaeological reflection of early East Iranian culture as described in the Avesta. So far, no burials related to the culture have been found, and this is taken as possible evidence of the Zoroastrian practice of exposure or sky burial.
In the region of Central Asia, the Bronze Age Oxus civilization (or BMAC) was characteristic for irrigation and proto-state society based on long distance trade of raw materials and goods. However, it suddenly disappeared in the Late Bronze Age (c. 1900–1500 BC), and in its place emerged the Early Iron Age (c. 1500/1400 - 1000 BC) Yaz I culture with rural settlements based around fortified structures, control of irrigation systems, with specific hand-made ceramic type, as well as the almost complete disappearance of graves, compared to thousands of kurgans in the north. The ceramics, and spherical stone maces, show continuity and contemporaneity between Yaz Depe and Ulug Depe of the Early Iron Age and Tekkem Depe among others of the Namazga-Tepe VI period.
Yaz I culture is argued to be related to the sedentarisation of the nomadic Indo-Iranians in the Eurasian Steppe, a synthesis with autochthonous traits. It extended from the central part of the Kopet Dag mountains to the fertile delta of the Murghab River. It is characterised for total lack of necropolises and tombs, as well as painted ceramic with triangle and ladder patterns.
Official source
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