Iaz-Depe
Iaz-Depe
(also Iaz-Tepe or Yaz-Depe), the remains of a settlement dating from the ninth to fourth centuries B.C., located 34 km northwest of the city of Bairam-Ali, in the Turkmen SSR. Excavations were conducted by the Southern Turkmen Expedition from 1954 to 1956.
Iaz-Depe consisted of a citadel, which stood on a mud-brick platform (ninth to sixth centuries B.C.) and rose to a height of about 12 m, and a settlement, which occupied an area of approximately 16 hectares. Researchers unearthed bronze and iron articles, arrowheads, stone missiles for slings, and pottery; the early pottery was hand-modeled, but beginning in the middle of the first millennium B.C., it was wheel-made. Iaz-Depe was an early center of slaveholding Margiana, inhabited by farmers and artisans (seeMARGIANA).