 So I'll be moving quite far north into the other talks into Central Asia. So Central Asian archaeology and early history are intensely dominated by images of highly mobile, nomadic warrior nomads. This is clearly the image when we deal with the Iron Age and the Skidium, the Saka, the Wuton. But these images in more recent years have been pushed into other time periods in Central Asia and prehistory. They've pushed back in the last 20 years into the Bronze and Iron Ages, and they often get resurrected when we talk about the medieval periods, especially with the Turkic and the Mongol empires. And this is the case with the Karakana period. They're said to have moved in from the North and they're said to have a highly pastoral-based economy. But this often comes into dichotomy with the archaeological realities. We see massive architectural public works projects at this time period, the construction of madrasas, mosques, and, most interestingly, large-scale irrigation projects. As far north as Terras, they have 100-kilometer irrigation canal dug at this time period. The palaces are said to have been surrounded by large ornate Persianate gardens. And there's clearly a much more elaborate economy going on. And these questions of what the economy look like become even more interesting when we talk about the expansive mountainous regions in Central Asia. And these mountains and the mountain valleys are often especially associated with pastoralist communities and increasingly more archaeological survey projects in these mountainous regions tend to show that there was a huge population density in the later medieval periods in the 10th and the 11th centuries and interestingly, much of this occupation looks to be sedentary. There are a number of really fascinating Soviet period excavations in these mountainous regions that look like sedentary agricultural villages. But one of the issues we are fronted with when trying to understand the role of agriculture in Central Asia during the medieval period is the lack of archaeological data. In the last decade or so, there's been a increased rates of production for archaeological data in Central Asia, but it's largely focused on the second and first millennia BC. So much of what we have to work with archaeopathically in this part of the world comes from random mentions or finds of material, mostly from Soviet period excavations, which we do not have images for or descriptions of how the identification of things such as walnuts or apricots in these archeological sites were found. I've pulled together a number of these identifications in a recent publication, so all the points up on the map were pulled together in a publication that came out about a month ago in plus one and they all represent at least some level of medieval archaeological data from Central Asia. In this talk, I'll be focusing on the Tashbalak site right there in the middle because it is a systematically collected data set from a high elevation occupation site in this area that is supposed to be dominated by nomadic pastoral communities. But before I get into it, I do want to quickly mention that we have other lines of data to work with here. There is a fragmentary set of textile sources. It's slimy earlier in time, but for this specific area, one of the more informative sources are the Saltian texts from Mug, which is a well-known fortified site at the base of the mountain photo zones. And these texts talk about the trade and the movement of grains and interestingly the fruits and nuts, both fresh and in a dried state. I want to note that it's not the only fortified site in the base of these mountain zones. This site here is actually only a few kilometers from Tashbalak, it's often called Mug as well. And it represents one of many of these sites at the base of the mountain foothill zones that appear to connect lower elevation populations with these village sites in the higher elevations in the mountain foothill zones. And I want to note that while recent work is just starting to move into these regions during the Soviet period there were quite a few impressive excavations in these mountainous zones looking at medieval occupation sites. So this is the site of Vazhardara. It is a large-scale urban settlement that 4,000 meters above sea level are touching the stone. This is up in an area that has frozen for most of the year. The arguments in the Soviet reports are that this is, this is mostly work at Pugnova, but this is a mining town that people were moving up to these high elevations to the extraction of metal ore, which they were then shipping down to lower elevations. But one way or the other, there would have been steady supply routes. This is well above the growing zone for any crops in this region. And there are frozen and desiccated remains from this archeological site of a wide variety of fruits and nuts. So in this site I'll be talking, this talk will be focusing on the Tashbalak site that 2,200 meters above sea level. It represents ongoing excavations under the directorship of Michael Farshetti from Washington University and Farhad Maksudov from the Institute of Archeology in Tashkent. I'm not gonna go into any detail about the site itself because it is an ongoing project and there'll be publications coming out very soon on this topic, but I do want to note that while on the surface it doesn't look like much directly below the surface there are the stone wall foundations that would have had a mud brick superstructure for over 100 architectural structures that would appear to be sedentary. I'm gonna focus on one context in particular because in the center of this seemingly sedentary town or village there's a flat open area. And this area has been interpreted by the excavators as the market bizarre or the trading point in the town and there's a large midden deposit in the middle of it which I put a trench into and floated most of the sediments coming out of this context. Finding copious remains of fruits and nuts including pistachio, almonds, sea buckthorn cherries, walnuts, Russian olives, and hat berries. And this is not all the fruits and nuts from Maysambu's but I pulled these ones out in particular because these are all fruit and nut varieties that are cultivated in this region today. But we have archeobotanical evidence for these specific varieties at other sites in this area dating back at least three millennia prior. These are fruits and nuts that grew in the short growth shall be fruit and nut forests of Central Asia before humans moved into this area. And many of these forests today have been lost probably due to heavy metal smelting operations in antiquity. But what's interesting is increasingly more evidence, genetic evidence from walnuts, evidence from apples which I'll mention in just a minute. And from many of these other crops including pistachio suggests that at least part of the domestication process for some of our most familiar fruits and nuts took place in these mountain foothills zones. And we can identify now from archeobotanical record at least five millennia of continual human interaction with these. So while some of these may actually represent foraging the wild fruits and nuts from the wild, by this time period, they're probably representing actual arboric culture. The grains and lagoons from the site include chickpeas, free threshing wheat, haul barley, and peas. And these are all crops that spread into this region much earlier in time. But what's interesting in some ways is the crop varieties that are not represented. So a fierce grass piece or lentils are crops that are prominent in Uzbekistan in earlier period archeobotanical studies but they are not present at this site in this time period. And I'm missing out other medieval sites. The millets are some of the most important green corn and fox demoes, some of the most important crops in Central Asia from earlier time periods. They're crops that are associated historically with low investment agriculture. And interestingly, they're completely missing in the Tashkulak as some which despite the fact that we're talking about a peripheral environmental zone as far as agricultural investment goes. So we were to think of this more as a nomadic economy we'd expect to find more of the millets and less of the intensive crops. But the millets are also absent in many other urban centers in Southern Central Asia in prehistory. So wheat and barley appear to be the dominant crops. Their winter wheat is grown at this elevation today. The wheat and barley is found in association with its chaffing material at the site with straw and impressions in both mud brick and ceramic sherds. Suggest it's probably locally cultivated. I also wanna note that many of the races from the site appear to be from a Tetchaboy wheat. And this is interesting and obviously I'm sure most of the people in this room are familiar with the arguments from Watson suggesting that hard wheat along with a number of other crops move into other parts of the Islamic world along with Islam. Well, we only have one data point here but this is one of the earliest data points for Tetchaboy bleeds in the Medieval period in Central Asia and it happens to be one of the earliest Islamic context in this part of Central Asia. So in addition to the grains and legumes, there are a number of fully domesticated crops that spread into this region at earlier time periods such as grapes, apples, peaches, apricots and melons. So all these fruits and nuts are represented at the site at Hashbalak in the Archaeopentanical record. But many of them such as grapes spread into the region much earlier in time. So the earliest Archaeopentanical evidence we have for grapes in Central Asia come from Goddudepe and the Bronze Age sites in Southern and Central Asia. This work by Naomi Miller and others. And they've clearly spread all the way up to Northern and Central Asia by the latter half of the first millennium BC. They're present at the site of Tuzesai, they're present in the desiccated areas of Xinjiang and they make a very important part of the economy. They're found in large abundance at a series of sites by the medieval period. They become prominence in the Tang dynasty and we have a number of historical texts preserved talking about their prominence in this period, especially the production of grape wine. Apples are probably one of the most intertwined fruits with the ancient Silk Road and we have a number of apple seeds from the site of Tashkulak. Apples are now with the genetic evidence coming out, apples are actually domesticated in Central Asia. But what is really interesting is it's these movements of the fruits once again, like we see with the walnuts and the pistachios, the movement of the fruit that leads to the domestication of them. So when the apple is moved along these transuration exchange routes, it hybridizes with other apple varieties, creating what we think of as the large fruiting apple peaches and apricots are usually thought of as crops of the caucuses of the Mediterranean, but all the best archeobotanical evidence that has come to surface to date suggests that they actually originate in Eastern China and East Asia and the lower Yangtze River Valley. But there is wild progenitors for each in Central Asia. So the possibility that once again, the process of domestication is coming out of these transuration exchange routes needs to be further investigated. And melons probably spread into Central Asia before the occupation of Tashvara. However, there are hundreds of land-raised varieties of melons maintained in Central Asia today, many of which are sources of regional pride and identity. Any market bizarre we were to go to in Central Asia today, the vendors would implore you to try their local varieties of melons, telling you that their melons are the best melons anywhere in the world. Many of these land-raised varieties have probably been maintained as far back as occupation at the site of Tashvara. So I do want to emphasize the fact that many of these fruit and nut varieties would have had to have been shipped up to the site and that historical sources illustrate the fact that there was a trade in fruit and nut varieties. And it's the movement of these crops that has helped lead to the hybridization and further domestication of many of our most familiar fruits. So I'll note quickly that there are a number of other crops that were introduced in the medieval period in Central Asia that are not mentioned or not identified in the Tashvara site. I'll be talking tomorrow about the spread of rice and cotton among other crops into Central Asia. And I'll close by emphasizing a few points. So the first is that there's clearly a diverse economy in Central Asia in the 10th and 11th centuries and at earlier time periods as well that the agricultural system relied on a wide variety of crops. Most interestingly, our boriculture and viticulture and that the domestication process for many of our most familiar fruits at least in part took place in Central Asia and is linked into the trade and movement of these fruits and nuts along what we often call the silk road. So I'll close by saying that the next time you eat an apple pie or a peach cobbler, remember that you are eating an archeological artifact of the ancient silk road. Thank you. Thank you.