Togolok-21
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| Togolok-21 | |
|---|---|
| Togolok 21 | |
| Location | |
| Country | Turkmenistan |
| Site | |
| Type | Settlement |
| Culture | Bactria–Margiana Archaeological Complex |
| Period | Bronze Age |
| Excavated by | Viktor Sarianidi |
| Cannabis finds | |
| Found | Impressions, Pollen |
| Remains in gypsum-lined vessels reported as ephedra, cannabis and poppy; impressions re-examined as broomcorn millet | |
| Identified by | Morphology, Pollen analysis |
| Identification | Disputed; see the article |
Togolok-21 is a fortified Bronze Age site in the delta of the Murghab River in south-eastern Turkmenistan, one of the group of more than thirty sites known as Togolok, the Turkmen word for "mound".[1] Its excavator, Viktor Sarianidi, interpreted it as a temple and reported remains of ephedra, cannabis and poppy in vessels set into brick platforms in one of its rooms.[2] The archaeobotanist C. C. Bakels, who examined material from one of these vessels, found no hemp in it. The identification is disputed.[3]
Site
At Togolok 1, another site of the group, Sarianidi excavated Tepe 2, a fortified building that Billings and colleagues compare with the larger Togolok 21. He interpreted both as monumental temple complexes. Finds like those of Dashly, Sapalli-tepe and Djarkutan came from both sites.[1] Terracotta pipes have also been recorded at Togolok 21.[1]
Sarianidi called the temple of Togolok-21 a kind of "cathedral" that served the whole of the ancient country of Margush. He counted it with Togolok-1 and the temenos of Gonur Depe among the three monumental temples of Margiana. He dated it to the last centuries of the second millennium BCE.[2] Billings and colleagues place the culture, which Sarianidi called the Bactria–Margiana Archaeological Complex, at about 2250 to 1700 BCE.[1] Meng Ren and colleagues refer to a possible temple at Togolok 21, an urban centre near Gonur.[4]
The reported finds
In Sarianidi's account the temple had a "white room" with low brick platforms along its walls, into which vessels holding thick layers of gypsum were fixed. He wrote that the vessels held remains of ephedra, cannabis and poppy, plants he took for the ingredients of narcotic drinks. He cited the analyses of the palaeobotanist N. R. Meyer-Melikyan. A fire altar stood hidden behind high walls in the temple. A small bone tube found at the entrance to its large altar, like one from the white room, held poppy pollen in Meyer-Melikyan's identification.[2] Meyer-Melikyan's report on the plant remains of Togolok-21 appeared in Sarianidi's Margiana and Protozoroastrism (1998).[2][3] In Necropolis of Gonur (2007) Sarianidi wrote that every temple of Margiana had yielded pollen of ephedra, hemp and poppy.[5]: 174
Sarianidi read the white rooms of Togolok-21 and the other temples as the places where a fermented drink of the haoma or soma type was prepared and the bone tubes as vessels for drinking it.[2]
Re-examination
Two pieces of material from a vessel at Togolok-21, sent by Sarianidi in July 1999, were among the material Bakels examined under the microscope at Leiden, with material from the white room of Gonur Depe. In both, the plant matter had decayed and survived as holes in a deposit of gypsum and clay. The round impressions in the material had been published as left by hemp seeds and the stems as ephedra. Bakels found neither. She found the seed impressions too small for hemp, with the wrong shape and surface pattern and identified them as broomcorn millet (Panicum miliaceum), a reading that four colleagues in the Netherlands and Britain shared. She could not extract pollen from the deposit; nor could Sietse Bottema.[3] She judged from the photographs Meyer-Melikyan and N. A. Avetov had published that she had the same material as they did. She limited that judgement to the material from Gonur.[3]
For Traci Billings and colleagues, Bakels's identification of the impressions in vessels at Gonur South and Togolok 21 as broomcorn millet is tentative.[1] Ren and colleagues, who also note the supposed poppy pollen reported from a bone tube of the late second millennium BCE at Togolok 21, wrote that the claims of archaeological cannabis in Central Asia are for the most part "spurious".[4] In editing Sarianidi's 2003 paper, J. E. M. Houben noted that it had not so far been possible to confirm Sarianidi's identifications and conclusions in all details.[2]
See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 Billings, Traci N.; Cerasetti, Barbara; Forni, Luca; Arciero, Roberto; Dal Martello, Rita; Carra, Marialetizia; Rouse, Lynne M.; Boivin, Nicole; Spengler, Robert N. (2022). "Agriculture in the Karakum: an archaeobotanical analysis from Togolok 1, southern Turkmenistan (ca. 2300–1700 B.C.)". Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution. 10 995490. doi:10.3389/fevo.2022.995490.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 Sarianidi, Victor I. (2003). "Margiana and Soma-Haoma". Electronic Journal of Vedic Studies. 9 (1). doi:10.11588/ejvs.2003.1.787.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 Bakels, C. C. (2003). "The contents of ceramic vessels in the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex, Turkmenistan". Electronic Journal of Vedic Studies. 9 (1). doi:10.11588/ejvs.2003.1.785.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Ren, Meng; Tang, Zihua; Wu, Xinhua; Spengler, Robert; Jiang, Hongen; Yang, Yimin; Boivin, Nicole (2019). "The origins of cannabis smoking: chemical residue evidence from the first millennium BCE in the Pamirs". Science Advances. 5 (6) eaaw1391. doi:10.1126/sciadv.aaw1391.
- ↑ Sarianidi, Victor (2007). Necropolis of Gonur (PDF). Athens: Kapon Editions. ISBN 978-960-7037-85-5.