Afrasiab excavations: remains of a monumental public building

To my surprise, excavations at Afrasiab (ancient Greek Maracanda or modern Samarkand in Uzbekistan) by the Franco-Uzbek Archaeological Mission have revealed the burnt remains of a monumental public building from the early Hellenistic period. Based on the charred remains of millet and barley, it has been established that this must have been a granary for the Greek garrison of Samarkand.

This square building made of mud bricks is characteristic of Hellenistic times. Archaeologists have determined that it was destroyed by a violent fire, which has baked the bricks and the cereals stored inside, transforming the content into a multicolored ash dust. The heat was so fierce that the bricks have intensively hardened and, at the same time have vitrified the soil as well as the lower parts of the walls, which at the same time led to their excellent preservation.

This granary was found at a depth of 8.5 meters, underneath successive occupation layers all the way to the mosque that was under construction in 1220 when Genghis Khan massacred a great deal of the population and destroyed Samarkand’s irrigation canals. This vast complex was divided into eight separate rooms of 11.5x5.5m, each set in two rows of four. Much attention was given to the construction of these storage rooms, whose walls were made of mud brick squares of 38x38cm and probably stood 2.5 meters high of which today some 2 meters are still preserved. It seems that the roof of this granary simply collapsed at the time of the fire, together with the now parched remains of the supporting beams.

It is clear that this building was used to store perishable food. Remains of millet and barley have been identified in four of these rooms, where millet was simply thrown on the unpaved floor. Analysis has shown that this was the so-called panicum miliaceum, i.e., a common millet generally found between northern China and western Europe and is grown on irrigated land. It is a cereal that does not germinate, meaning that it can easily be stored for up to ten years. This millet played a fundamental role in people’s food staples in Central Asia and would have been ideally used in garrison life or as a life-saving food in case of siege. It is evident that barley and millet were the major food supplies for soldiers, although in Achaemenid times, the barley-gruel was eaten by soldiers and slaves as well as horses, and the rations were counted. The barley, however, is thought to have been used more as fodder for the horses rather than to feed humans, and it seems to have been stored in sacks. In many places, the floors and the walls were covered with ashes in shades of green, blue, orange, red, yellow, and grey, which may refer to other kinds of food - yet unidentified. It has been calculated that the granary of Afrasiab could hold as much as 75 tons of cereals.

Further investigation has established that the fire was a very fierce one, and researchers don’t exclude a possible explosion caused by a high concentration of gas, as we know to happen in modern grain silos. There are also indications that attempts were made to extinguish the fire or to contain it; by letting the roof collapse, they hoped to kill the fire – to no avail, as the blaze devastated the entire storage building.

Typical for early Greek occupation in Afrasiab is the use of square bricks as in the granary, which matches similar bricks found in the inner gallery of the ancient rampart and the posterns of the so-called gate of Bukhara. Till recently, no traces of Greek residential houses have been found, although their presence has been suggested by Greek ceramics found in different locations surveyed by previous Soviet research. In fact, this granary is the first proof of the earliest Greek inhabitants of Afrasiab. Future excavations will certainly contribute to a better understanding of Hellenistic Samarkand.

This information is completing my earlier post: Afrasiab, ancient Samarkand, where I’m concentrating on Alexander spending the winter of 328/327 BC within these walls and on the circumstances leading to the murder of Cleitos.

[Pictures from Academia.org]