Sapalli-Tepe

Sapalli-Tepe 

(also Sapallitepe), the remains of a settlement of sedentary land cultivators and stock raisers dating from the Bronze Age, located 30 km southwest of the city of Sherabad, in the Uzbek SSR. It was excavated between 1969 and 1973 by an expedition of the Academy of Sciences of the Uzbek SSR.

The center of Sapalli-Tepe was a square fortification, measuring 90 × 90 m, that had walls of mud bricks. Inside the walls were multiroom houses, with burial catacombs beneath the floors. The finds indicate that handicrafts were highly developed; vessels of various shapes that were turned on a potter’s wheel and fired in kilns were uncovered, as well as bronze axes, dishware, and pins with heads in the shape of rosettes and mountain goats. The Sapalli-Tepe culture was closely related to various Bronze Age cultures of Turkmenia (Namazga-Tepe V and VI), Afghanistan (Mundigak IV), and Iran (Hissar III, Shahr-i Sukhtah). The existence of the Sapalli-Tepe culture is evidence of the widespread nature of the ancient oriental type of urbanized culture in the second quarter of the second millennium B.C. in southern Uzbekistan.

REFERENCE

Askarov, A. Sapallitepe. Tashkent, 1973.