Chorasmia and the Vendīdād: Funerary Archaeology and Avestan Prescriptions

The archaeological exploration of the only mountain of Karakalpakstan (northern Uzbekistan), the barren Sultan-uizdag/ Sultan-uvais, resumed in 2017 after a hiatus of decades since its first uncomplete archaeological valuation in Soviet times. The project is led by Michele Minardi under the auspices of the Australian Research Council Discovery ProjectGrant 170101770 which currently supports the works of the Karakalpak-Australian Expedition to Ancient Chorasmia (KAE) in cooperation with the Institute for the Humanities, Karakalpak branch of the Uzbek Academy of Sciences, Nukus. This paper presents the preliminary results of fieldwork which had its focus on the southeastern spur of the Sultan-uiz-dag. The presence of numerous ossuary burials on its summits reveals that the area has been used as an extended burial ground for a prolonged period of time. Although most of the ossuaries recorded consist of scattered fragments which had lost their content, an intact cluster of such burials was discovered and excavated (Site 01). The archaeologicaland anthropological evidence gathered from both the survey and the excavation of Site 01 seem to confirm what until now could only be assumed: the Chorasmians strictly followed the ritual and the funerary prescriptions contained in the Avestan Vendīdād. Until the major discovery of the Akchakhan-kala’s Avestan gods, the capacity to archaeologically trace Zoroastrianism was questioned. With due caution, this paper deals with the problem regarding the presence of resilient Zoroastrianism in Chorasmia, a polity which entered the “Avestan sphere” apparently in parallel to the Achaemenid conquest.