page_title: Bactria–Margiana Archaeological Complex
section_title: Early Food Producing Era
hierarchical_section_title: Bactria–Margiana Archaeological Complex / Development / Early Food Producing Era
caption_attribution_description: Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex; Sculpture; Stone-Sculpture
context_page_description: The Bactria–Margiana Archaeological Complex, also known as the Oxus civilization, is the modern archaeological designation for a Bronze Age civilization of Central Asia, dated to c. 2400–1900 BC in its urban phase or Integration Era, located in present-day northern Afghanistan, eastern Turkmenistan, southern Uzbekistan and western Tajikistan, centred on the upper Amu Darya in Bactria, and at Murghab river delta in Margiana. Its sites were discovered and named by the Soviet archaeologist Viktor Sarianidi. Bactria was the Greek name for the area of Bactra, in what is now northern Afghanistan, and Margiana was the Greek name for the Persian satrapy of Marguš, the capital of which was Merv, in modern-day southeastern Turkmenistan.
  Sarianidi's excavations from the late 1970s onward revealed numerous monumental structures in many sites, fortified by impressive walls and gates.
context_section_description: There is archaeological evidence of settlement in the well-watered northern foothills of the Kopet Dag during the Neolithic period, in this region, at Jeitun (or Djeitun), mud brick houses were first occupied during Early Food Producing Era, also known as Jeitun Neolithic from c. 7200 to 4600 BC.  The inhabitants were farmers who kept herds of goats and sheep and grew wheat and barley, with origins in southwest Asia. Jeitun has given its name to the whole Neolithic period in the northern foothills of the Kopet Dag. At the late Neolithic site of Chagylly Depe, farmers increasingly grew the kinds of crops that are typically associated with irrigation in an arid environment, such as hexaploid bread wheat, which became predominant during the Chalcolithic period. This region is dotted with the multi-period hallmarks characteristic of the ancient Near East, similar to those southwest of the Kopet Dag in the Gorgan Plain in Iran.
caption: Female statuette, an example of a "Bactrian princess"; late 3rd–early 2nd millennium BC; steatite or chlorite and alabaster; 9 × 9.4 cm; Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York City)
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