Helmand culture

The Helmand culture (also Helmand civilization), c. 3300–2350 BCE,[1] is a Bronze Age culture that flourished mainly in the middle and lower valley of the Helmand River, in southern Afghanistan (Kandahar, Helmand and Nimruz provinces) and eastern Iran (Sistan and Baluchestan Province), predominantly in the third millennium BCE.[2]

Pottery vessel from Shahr-e Sukhteh

The people of the Helmand culture lived partly in cities with temples and palaces, providing evidence for a complex and advanced social structure. The main cities so far known are Shahr-i Sokhta (in modern Iran) and Mundigak (Afghanistan). Research on the finds from both places showed that these cities shared the same culture.[3] These are the earliest discovered cities in this part of the world, although the village Mehrgarh further to the south east is considerably older. It is possible that the Helmand culture formed once one ancient state.[4]

The pottery of the Helmand civilization is colorfully painted with mainly geometrical patterns, plants and animals are also depicted. Bronze was known. In Shahr-i Sokhta were found texts in Elamite language providing evidence with connections to the west of the Iran. There are also a few connections with the Indus Valley civilisation, but it seems that the Helmand civilization was earlier and did not overlap chronological very much with the cities in the Indus valley.[5]

V. M. Masson discussed several types of early civilizations. He distinguishes three typesː 1. Civilizations of tropical agriculture; 2. Civilizations of irrigation agriculture and 3. civilizations of non-irrigated Mediterranean agriculture. For the civilizations of irrigation agriculture he sees two sub typesː Civilizations with irrigation derived from large rivers and civilizations with irrigation agriculture based on limited water sources. According to Masson , the Helmand culture clearly belongs to the latter type. He does not mention the term Helmand culture, but the cities Mundigak and Shahr-i Sokhta.[6]

Geography and Archaeology
Helmand River

The formative phase of Helmand civilization was in the middle and lower Helmand river, which flows c. 1300 km southwestwards, crossing the deserts of Registan and Margo, reaching Iranian Sistan. The two most known sites are Mundigak, 35 km northwest of Kandahar, in Afghanistan, and Shahr-i Sokhta, 425 km distant, 50 km south-southwest of Zabol in Iran. Lamberg-Karlovsky and Tosi (1973) considered important the uniformity of finds in Shahr-i Sokhta and Mundigak shown in thousands of potsherds, lithic industry, metal working, building techniques, brick shapes, figurines and seals at the end of 4th millennium BCE. And although the Afghan region between both main sites bears no archaeological centers identified, there are two pottery production hubs, Tepe Dash and Rud-i Biyaban 2, both to the south of Shahr-i Sokhta; and Deh Morasi Ghundai and Said Qala Tepe to the southeast of Mundigak.[7]: p.881 

Significant archaeological similarities have been found also in Quetta Valley at Damb Sadaat, and in the Kachi Plain in Pakistan, around 200 km and over 300 km to the southeast of Kandahar respectively.[7]: p.882 

Chronology

The site of Mundigak presents four periods of occupation from first times to urban development:[8]

Period Chronology Phase
I (~4000–3800 BCE) Ph. 1-2
I (~3800–3400 BCE) Ph. 3-4
II (~3400–3200 BCE)
III (~3200–2900 BCE)
IV (~2900–2400 BCE)

Archaeologists Jarrige, Didier, and Quivron considered that Periods III and IV in Mundigak have archaeological links with Periods I, II, and III in Shahr-i Sokhta.[9]

On the other hand, based on recently calibrated radiocarbon samples in the site Tappeh Graziani, very close to Shahr-i Sokhta, Italian and Iranian archaeologists showed that the site was abandoned around 2350 BCE, and the chronology of Shahr-i Sokhta commented by archaeologist Massimo Vidale is as follows:[1]

Period Dating Settlement size
I3200–2800 BCE10.5–15.5 ha[10]: 882 
II2800–260080 ha[11]: 21 
III2600–245080 ha
IV2450–2350

Iranian archaeologists S.M.S. Sajjadi and Hossein Moradi, during excavation season (2014-2015) in area 26 of Shahr-i Sokhta's Period IV, found a system of semi-columns in a long passage between two buildings, and Massimo Vidale considers it is part of a "fully palatial" compound with very similar semi-columns to those in Mehrgarh found years ago by the French mission that dated them around 2500 BCE.[1]: min.12:10 

References
  1. Vidale, Massimo, (15 March, 2021). "A Warehouse in 3rd Millennium B.C. Sistan and Its Accounting Technology", in Seminar "Early Urbanization in Iran".
  2. Schaffer, Jim G., and Cameron A. Petrie, (2019), "The development of a 'Helmand Civilisation' south of the Hindu Kush", in Raymond Allchin, Warwick Ball, and Norman Hammond (eds.), The Archaeology of Afghanistan, From earliest Times to the Timurid Period, New Edition, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, ISBN 9780748699179, pp. 161–259.
  3. Biscione, Raffaele, (1974). Relative Chronology and pottery connection between Shahr-i Sokhta and Munigak, Eastern Iran, in Memorie dell'Istituto Italiano di Paleontologia Umana II, pp. 131–145.
  4. McIntosh, Jane, (2008).The Ancient Indus Valley: New Perspectives (Understanding Ancient Civilizations), 1st Edition, Santa Barbara, California, ISBN 978-1-57607-908-9, pp. 86–87.
  5. Jarrige, Jean-François, Aurore Didier, and Gonzague Quivron, (2011). "Shahr-i Sokhta and the Chronology of the Indo-Iranian Borderlands", in Paléorient, 2011, vol. 37, n°2., pp. 7–34.
  6. V. M. Masson: Altyn-Depe. (translated by Henry N. Michael from Russian), The University Museum – University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia 1988, ISBN 0-934718-54-7, pp. 128–130
  7. Mutin, Benjamin, and Leah Minc, (2019). "The formative phase of the Helmand Civilization, Iran and Afghanistan: New data from compositional analysis of ceramics from Shahr-i Sokhta, Iran", in Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports Volume 23, February 2019, pp. 881-899.
  8. Lyonnet, Bertille, and Nadezhda A. Dubova, (2020). "Questioning the Oxus Civilization or Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Culture (BMAC): An overview", in The World of Oxus Civilization, Routledge, p. 8, Table 1.1.
  9. Jarrige, J.-F., A. Didier, and G. Quivron, (2011). "Shahr-i Sokhta and the Chronology of the Indo-Iranian Borderlands", in Paléorient 37 (2), p. 17: "...We agree with the links, which we ourselves often observed, between Shahr-i Sokhta I, II and III and Mundigak III and IV and between the sites of Balochistan and the Indus valley at the end of the 4th millennium and in the first half of the 3rd millennium BC..."
  10. Mutin, Benjamin, and Leah Minc, (2019). "The formative phase of the Helmand Civilization, Iran and Afghanistan: New data from compositional analysis of ceramics from Shahr-i Sokhta, Iran", in Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports Volume 23, February 2019, pp. 881-899.
  11. Sajjadi, S.M.S., et al. (2003). "Excavations at Shahr-i Sokhta: First Preliminary Report on the Excavations of the Graveyard,1997-2000", Iran, Vol. 41 (2003), pp. 21-97.
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