NO. 13 SOVIKT ANTHROPOLOGY — FIELD IO9 



The first agrarian settlements in this area (Krasnaia Rechka site) 

 are isolated fortified houses of unbaked brick, two or three stories 

 high, of long parallel apartments (1.5 x 2.0 x 8.0 m.) with flat roofs. 

 These are attributed to the period before the seventh century. At 

 Krasnaia Rechka these buildings were ruined and upon them were 

 Zoroastrian burials, of the seventh-eighth centuries. Bernshtam, who 

 disagrees with the first-century B. C. dating for comparable Soghdian 

 finds from eastern Turkestan by Sir Aurel Stein, attributes them to 

 the fifth or sixth century. According to Bernshtam the colonization 

 activities of Soghdiana were not begun until the period of the third- 

 fifth centuries ("the first period of Soghdian colonization in the 

 Jetty-Su"). During this period Soghdian colonics were still isolated 

 culturally and economically in the midst of the Jctty-Su nomads. 



From the end of the seventh century the cultural influence of 

 Soghdiana increased both in volume and significance, in crafts as 

 well as in fine arts. A Soghdian version of the favorite Sasanian 

 decorative motif, a dotted circle filled with cither a pictorial or orna- 

 mental subject, is encountered in a scries of sites, in Mongolia (Tola), 

 Kirghizia (Ak Peshin), and Altai (Katanda). One of the examples 

 combined the Sasanian dotted circle with a Chinese ornamental lotus 

 in the center. Quite possibly the imitations of Sasanian platters, 

 obtained by the Saian-Altai Expedition near Yenisei should be 

 attributed to the Soghdian craftsmen living among the nomads. 



Soghdian influences on the pottery of this period from Kazakhstan 

 and Kirghizia have been described by Bernshtam (V'estnik Drevnei 

 Istorii, No. 4, 1939). 



A contributing factor here may have been a second mass migration 

 of the Soghdians, particularly from Bukhara, during the seventh 

 century. To this period belongs the founding of the typical Mawer- 

 annahran towns with citadel, shaliristan and rabat, in the valleys of 

 the Chu and Talas Rivers in the northern foothills of the Tien Shan. 

 This movement continued during the Arabian conquest of the Jetty-Su 

 during the first half of the eighth century. 



To this period belongs the spread of Soghdian writing in this area, 

 and its use for the local Turkish dialect. The oldest examples of 

 Uigurian writing, in Soghdian characters, are the so-called Turgcsh 

 coins of the eighth century. 



During the ninth century Soghdian culture begins to disappear, 

 and in the Jetty-Su area it become a component part of the culture 

 of Turkish nomads, after the assimilation of Soghdians by the Turkish 

 population. According to Muhammad of Kashgar, the Soghdians 

 adopted the clothes and manners of the Turks, from Balasagun to 



