Kurgans of the Eastern Kugitang Piedmonts: Preliminary Report for Season 2017

Abstract

The valleys of the Kugitang piedmont (Sherabad District, Surkhandarya Province, Uzbekistan) have been investigated by the Czech‑Uzbekistani expedition since 2011. Over the last three years, hundreds of stone fea‑ tures have been detected and preliminarily interpreted as kurgans (i.e. burial mounds); the purpose of these features, however, still remains unclear. Consequently, the kurgans started to be systematically investigated in 2017. This report presents preliminary results of the field survey, a morphological description and a basic spatial analysis of the kurgans within clusters, and the clusters themselves within the surrounding landscape.

Keywords

• Kurgans
• Yaz culture
• Pashkurt Valley
• Central Asia
• Bactria
• landscape archaeology