A tale of pots and people

Oases situated along river valleys or in the final section of water courses and river deltas are distinctive ecological features in Central Asia and constitute major human settlement areas. Surrounded by steppes or deserts, fed by waters flowing down from snow-capped mountains, oasis systems have played a dominant role in developing regional political and socio-cultural entities and in determining human activities, habits, and behaviours in the arid environment of Central Asia. Over a long period of time, such environments underwent intense climatic and hydrographic transformations, as well as political, cultural, and socio-economic developments. During the first millennium CE, these different dynamics resulted in a continuous transformation process of the oasis system. The aim of the project is to investigate the dynamics that affected the Bukhara Oasis in the pre-Islamic period (4th / 3rd century BCE to 8th century CE) and to get insight into the everyday life of the oasis inhabitants. The Bukhara Oasis constitutes a unique and inestimable case study of an oasis system developed in historical times when the former swampy area progressively dried out leaving this space for cultivable lands in the oasis. Its development can be followed through all these centuries when the oasis progressively became one of the major hubs within the Silk Roads network and a significant regional power in the area. Unfortunately, this phase is poorly documented in written records, and its analysis mostly depends on archaeological data and material culture evidence. In this view, pottery has the potential to be a fundamental research tool as it was and still is a vital part of everyday life, so common, and so closely linked to people`s lives, that it is the most frequent and relevant finding in archaeological excavations. Furthermore, pottery has considerable potential to provide insights into the ways people managed their everyday life in each period, returning fundamental pieces of information overlooked by historical written sources. With an analytical approach that incorporates an archaeological-historical perspective, this study will ultimately provide a long-term material history of everyday life in the oasis that looks behind and beyond conventional historical accounts. To achieve these results, I will focus on ceramics as an excellent material marker, abundantly found in archaeological excavations, analysing this dataset within its assemblages and archaeological contexts. The data derives from the unpublished assemblages found during the activities of the Mission Archéologique Franco-Ouzbèke dans lOasis de Boukhara (MAFOUB) alongside a comparative study of the archaeological literature and will be examined using research tools developed in current material culture studies and archaeological theories.