The Rural Settlements of Hellenistic and post-Hellenistic Central Asia: an Archaeology of Indigenous Life under Colonial Rule

Hellenistic Central Asia is among the most exoticized areas of study for Classical and Near Eastern archaeological research due to the discovery of ancient Greek colonies in the modern nations of Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. Most notable is the excavations of the Hellenistic “new foundation” at Ai Khanoum in the Dasht-i Qala Plain of northeast Afghanistan. This dissertation approaches Greek rule in Central Asia from a post-colonial perspective in decentering scholarly emphases on Hellenism in the east in favor of a new paradigm that emphasizes the diversity of indigenous lifeways among ancient, colonized Bactrians and Sogdians. Drawing on a vast overlooked dataset of Soviet and post-Soviet archaeological literature, as well as my own excavations of a rural farmstead at Bashtepa in western Uzbekistan, I situate indigenous life under colonial rule within the context of rural, non-elite agriculturally based economies. Methodologically this involves: first, the systematic GIS mapping of nearly 1,250 known archaeological sites from the 4th c. BCE – 4th c. CE to determine where ancient indigenous populations lived; and second, a detailed appraisal of rural settlement architecture across these vast landscapes. This data is then compared to preliminary results of excavations of a rural farmstead a Bashtepa, the first scientifically excavated pit-house farmstead in Central Asia. It is shown that standing biases in Classical and Near Eastern approaches to Central Asian archaeology have confused our understanding of ancient life in this region, overemphasized the importance of Greek rule, and ignored evidence for non-Greek rural life