Place · Harappan outpost · Afghanistan
Shortugai
Also known as Shortughai, Shortugai, Shortugai Harappan site
A Harappan settlement on the Amu Darya plain in north-eastern Afghanistan, eleven hundred kilometres beyond the nearest Indus city and the furthest north any Harappan site has been found. It sits where the lapis lazuli of Badakhshan and the tin of Central Asia enter the trade, which is presumably why it is there.
- Function
- Archaeology & heritage
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 37.320, 69.550 (approximate)
Worth knowing
French excavation in the 1970s found Indus pottery, seals, weights and etched carnelian beads in a village of a few hectares, with no local antecedents — a colony rather than a contact site. It is the clearest evidence that the Harappan network reached for raw materials rather than only exchanging at its edge.
Connections (3)
- Trade routeSutkagan Dor
Sutkagan Dor on the Makran coast and Shortugai on the Amu Darya are the two furthest outposts of the Harappan network, about eighteen hundred kilometres apart and pointing in opposite directions: one at the sea route to the Gulf, the other at the lapis of Badakhshan and the tin of Central Asia. Both are small fortified places, which is what this system's edges look like.
- Trade routeUr
Shortugai on the Oxus and Ur on the Euphrates are the two ends of the Harappan reach, three thousand kilometres apart. One is an Indus colony placed at the source of lapis and tin; the other is a Sumerian city with Indus beads in its royal graves and Indus weights in its houses. Between them they show a network that acquired raw material at one end and sold finished goods at the other.
- Site adjacencyAi-Khanoum
Two foreign settlements on the same stretch of the Oxus, two thousand years apart, and both there for what came out of the mountains behind. Shortugai was a Harappan outpost beside the lapis lazuli sources of Badakhshan, the furthest-flung Indus site known. Ai-Khanoum was a Greek city at the Kokcha confluence a few kilometres away. The lapis that reaches Egypt and Mesopotamia in the Bronze Age, and the garnets and gold of the Hellenistic trade, both came down this one valley.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Shortugai”. Henri-Paul Francfort, Fouilles de Shortughai: recherches sur l'Asie centrale protohistorique (1989).
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