Lands of Asia layouts (Eng) 26.11.21

part i | civilisations
civilisation was farming based on a primitive form of irrigation known as liman.
Hunting and gathering continued to play a role in the Jeitun economy. People lived
in small village settlements with one-room houses for whole families. For example,
archaeologists surmise that approximately 150–160 people lived in Jeitun, which
consisted of 30 one-room houses built with loaf-shaped pieces of clay. The site
includes a temple like that found at Pessejikdepe with walls decorated with primitive
painting. Hallmarks of Jeitun culture include hand-moulded ceramics with a brown
and red painted decoration. Tools for work and everyday use were made of stone
and bone, and included axes, bone sickles and borers, flint microlithic cores, sickle
blades and plates. The most important sites of Jeitun culture are the settlements of
Jeitun, Chagalydepe, Choplidepe and Pessejikdepe, among others. In southern
Turkmenistan Jeitun culture was followed by the Chalcolithic culture, as evidenced
by sites such as Anau, Altyndepe and Karadepe.
The Kelteminar culture. In the lower reaches of the Amu Darya, along the Akcha
Darya delta and in the adjacent areas of the Kyzylkum desert, are archaeological sites
of Neolithic Kelteminar tribes who lived here in the second half of the 4th to the 3rd
millennium BC. These tribes relied on hunting and fishing and their settlements were
situated within the delta and along its banks. They lived in huge dwellings made of
wood and reeds, with conical roofs. The history of Kelteminar culture can be divided
into two phases: an earlier phase (covering the second half of the 4th to the first half
of the 3rd millennium BC) and a later phase (covering the second half of the 3rd
to the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC). The earlier phase is predominantly
characterised by microlithoid flint objects: arrowheads, blunt-edged blades, scrapers
made from stone flakes or blades and borers. There is evidence of point-bottomed,
hand-moulded pottery made with clay mixed with chamotte, crushed stones, crushed
shells and fine quartz sand. The firing in the vessels is poor and uneven and the
surfaces are decorated by inscribed or wavy lines, chevrons and round impressions.
Some of the vessels found have been decorated with red or yellow paint. In the later
phase, trapezoidal arrowheads and spearheads, very large knives, wedge-shaped axes
and flat-bottomed vessels appear. The most important sites are Janbas-4 and Kavat-7
in the Turtkul district of Karakalpakstan.
The third important Neolithic culture in Central Asia is the Hissar culture, named
after the first artefacts found in the Hissar Valley in Tajikistan. It was the culture of the
tribes which inhabited mountain valleys and foothills, which is why the culture is often
referred to as ‘Mountain Neolithic’. These tribes were mainly concentrated in southern
Tajikistan, although isolated finds of their material culture have been found in the
Baisun and Babatag Mountains in the south of Uzbekistan and also in Kyrgyzstan.
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