A Sepulchral pit from Late Iron Age in Balkh. The site of Tepe Zargaran (Afghanistan)

International audienceIn southern Central Asia, the Iron Age saw the almost-complete disappearance of burial (Sine Sepulchro period covering the Yaz I-III sequence, ca. 1500-330 BCE), a fact generally interpreted as an evidence of excarnation. This paper intends to present an exceptional discovery of a set of human bones made by the DAFA (Délégation archéologique française en Afghanistan) at the site of Tepe Zargaran, Bactra, in Afghanistan. It groups human bones -including calvaria, elements of the torso and long bones- belonging to several individuals of different ages and both sexes. This discovery is well dated in the second half of the 4th c. BCE, at the end of the Achaemenid period. It is compared to similar atypical burial pits of the Iron Age, which indicates a very long socio-cultural tradition of nearly a millennium, involving handling of the corpses, shifting of part of the bodies from a first deposit, and reoccupation of ancient storage structures