Lands of Asia layouts (Eng) 26.11.21

4 .7
jade are rarely found on the territory of Central Asia, and most of them are items of
jewellery dating back to the Early and Late Medieval periods.
The earliest item of jade found in Central Asia is an article from a Chust site,
dating from the beginning of the 1st millennium BC. This is also the earliest evidence
of links between this region and Eastern Turkestan (present-day Xinjiang).
An oval, seal stone with an image of a yak made of jade dating from the Achaemenid
period was found in the ruins of a burial ground of the Kenkol type in the upper
reaches of the Sokh river (in Ferghana). A jade bowl dating back to the period
from the 2nd century BC to the 1st century AD was found in the Berkarin burial
ground in Kyrgyzstan., There have been two finds of jade objects outside Ferghana
and Semirechye: the hilt of an iron dagger and the detail on the fastening of a belt.
They were found in barrow No. 2 of the Orlat burial mound at the site of Kurgantepa,
located north of the town of Ishtykhan in Samarkand region, together with some
bone plates (2nd–1st centuries BC). The head of a jade object with an image of a wolf
dragon (3rd–2nd centuries BC) was found at Takht-i Sangin.
A collection of archaeological objects from a museum in Tashkent dating from
the pre-revolutionary period contains a number of jade items but there are no dates
and almost no information about where they were found. Among them are a seal and
buckle of cream jade, a jade (white) ring, a jade (greenish) ring (found at the site of
Eski-Akhsi, Chust district), two more jade rings, a jade seal without an inscription, a
jade seal with a flower, a quadrangular jade seal with an inscription, and another jade
seal (found at the site of Afrasiab). It is believed that some of these items date to the
pre-Islamic period.
Archaeological data has substantially supplemented the information provided by
Chinese chronicles about Chinese imports to the Western Regions. Although these
texts provide detailed lists of goods and gifts exported to China from the Western
Regions, they say almost nothing about the reverse process, and only provide
information about Chinese envoys to the regions and the time of their sojourns.
The authors of the Chinese chronicles say nothing about the introduction of
Chinese coins to the Western Regions and their subsequent influence on the coinage
of these regions. The role and significance of Chinese money, especially from the Han
period, in the history of money and commodity relations in this region has still not
been sufficiently studied.
For example, it is thought that no money and commodity relations existed
in Ferghana in the first centuries AD – the main area where Han coins penetrated
Central Asia at that time – but that wu zhu coins were used similarly to Charon’s
oboli or as simple ornaments. This view is based on the preponderance of finds of
Chinese wu zhu coins in burial sites. However, recent finds in habitation layers of
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