Millet cultivation in Central Asia: A response to Miller et al.

Abstract

In a recent special issue of The Holocene, Miller et al. review the evidence for the spread of millet (Panicum miliaceum and Setaria italica) across Eurasia. Among their arguments, they contend that millet cultivation came to Eurasian regions with hot, dry summers when irrigation was introduced, as part of a region-wide shift toward agricultural intensification in the first millennium BC. This hypothesis seems to align with the pattern of agricultural change observed in the Khorezm oasis, a Central Asian polity of the first millennium BC and first millennium AD. While we wholeheartedly accept this hypothesis for its explanatory value regarding trends across Eurasia, in this paper we nevertheless suggest that the introduction of millet to Central Asia needs further explication. Specifically, we seek to address the underlying assumption that this introduction was predicated upon centrally organized, state-level land development, increased sedentism, and the rise of Mesopotamian-style social complexity. We describe how millet cultivation in Khorezm was preceded by multi-resource strategies that included the cultivation of summer crops, and emphasize that this earlier history mattered significantly to the evolution of Khorezmian society and agriculture in the first millennium BC. In contrast to the imperial systems of West Asia, in Khorezm the introduction of complex irrigation works supported the expansion and greater stratification of pre-existing agropastoral lifeways, and helped to buttress the rise of nomadic elites within an agrarian zone. We believe the example of Khorezm is important because it helps to explain the emergence of integrated mobile-sedentist societies in the first millennium AD in Central Asia as a result of agricultural change. It also provides cultural and historical context to the spread of millet cultivation in the first millennium BC, suggesting that this phenomenon had significantly different implications for societies across Eurasia.

Keywords

agriculture archaeobotany Eurasia intensification irrigation Uzbekistan

Introduction

In a recent special issue of The Holocene, Miller et al. (2016) trace the spread of the East Asian millets, Panicum miliaceum and Setaria italica, westward across Central Asia in the second and first millennia BC. Compiling a growing record of paleobotanical and isotopic data, the authors argue that there were two distinct waves of crop translocation at that time in prehistory. In the first wave, millet was adopted along the foothill ecocline of Central Asia, where summer precipitation was high enough to enable pastoralists and small-scale farmers to grow the cultivar as a low-investment, rain-fed summer crop in the second millennium BC. In the second wave, millet cultivation was taken up in the summer-dry zone of Central Asia, when ‘state-sponsored’ irrigation schemes were introduced in the mid first millennium BC that could overcome the lack of rainfall in this region and provide the water needed for summer cultivation (Miller et al., 2016: 6–7). They conclude that two separate human processes – risk reduction and agricultural intensification – explain these two waves of translocation that spread millet cultivation across Eurasia at different times.

Miller et al.’s key observation is that widespread millet cultivation comes later to the hot, dry summer environments of Eurasia, in tandem with the expansion of irrigation. This pattern seems to fit the record in the Khorezm oasis; however, in this paper we dispute how and why this later crop translocation developed, and the effect that it had on the socio-political evolution of a Central Asian polity. Specifically, we wish to show that risk reduction through low-investment summer cultivation was not a practice exclusive to the moist, foothill ecoclines of Central Asia, and that lowland desert dwellers also engaged in these practices with important implications for agricultural change, social evolution, and the genesis of steppe culture within their borders.

The Khorezm oasis

Located in the desert-steppe region of Central Asia and receiving less than 100 mm of annual precipitation, the Khorezm oasis fits neatly within the summer-dry zone described by Miller and colleagues (Figure 1). The majority of rainfall here occurs from October to May, with summer cultivation only possible through water management. The first evidence for the practice of agriculture in Khorezm appears in the mid to late second millennium BC and is associated with the Tazabag’yab and Suyargan culture complexes (Andrianov, 1969: 102–113; Itina, 1977; Rapoport et al., 2000: 18; Tolstov, 1948a: 83–85, 1948b: 77). The first hard evidence for millet cultivation (seed remains) comes from the site of Dingild’zhe, dated to the mid first millennium BC (5th century BC; species not reported). Numerous finds of sickles, stone querns, and storage pits and vessels containing millet seeds suggest that millet cultivation was already well underway at this site by this time (Vorob’eva, 1973: 207). Other mid first millennium BC cultivates recovered at Dingild’zhe included multi-rowed barley (Hordeum vulgare L.), grapes (as reported, Vitis vinifera ssp. sativa D.S.), and possibly, wheat (single seed, identification unclear, species not reported).

Figure 1.

The Khorezm oasis in the summer-dry zone of Central Asia.

Agriculture in Khorezm, second through the first millennium BC

Essential to our critique is the question of the appearance of three innovations in the Khorezm oasis: (1) summer cultivation, (2) millet translocation, and (3) statecraft. In this section, we address the first two of these innovations; in the following section, we address the latter.

Summer cultivation

Miller and colleagues assert that the spread of millet into arid Central Asia hinged on the extension of cultivation into the dry summer season, which was only possible when irrigation was introduced. They argue that irrigation technology allowed for the production of a high-yielding, summer-grown cereal in a region ‘manifestly unsuited’ to it (Miller et al., 2016: 6).

When was this expansion of the production season first possible in Khorezm? In keeping with Miller and colleague’s timeframe, complex irrigation works first appeared in Khorezm in the mid first millennium BC (6th century BC, sites of Kyuzely-gyr and Bazar-kala, Andrianov, 2016 [1969]: 156–157; Rapoport et al., 2000: 25–29; Tolstov, 1962: 89–117; Vishnevskaya and Rapoport, 1997). While it is true that this change could have allowed for higher yields of grain, summer cultivation was already made possible by the rudimentary irrigation systems documented at Tazabag’yab, Suyargan, and Amiribad sites by the mid to late second millennium BC (Andrianov, 1969: 102–113; Itina, 1977: 173–194; Tolstov, 1962: 74–77). This irrigation was likely useful throughout the growing season, but the spring/summer inundation of the Amu Darya River meant that some of the best opportunities for early cultivators probably rested with summer crops (Brite and Marston, 2013: 48, Figure 7).

In Khorezm, rudimentary forms of irrigation and non-irrigated oytak farming may have been widespread practices that supported the cultivation of summer crops well prior to the advent of complex irrigation works in the mid first millennium BC. Oytak farming is an indigenous technique based on water harvesting from naturally occurring takyrs (clay surfaces), which uses furrows to collect water and deposit it on agricultural fields. Oytak farming has a deep history in Khorezm, with written accounts of it being used to grow summer crops stretching back a millennium (Fleskens et al., 2007: 25; Hansen, 2015; Lalymenko, 1999; Maman et al., 2011; Mavlyanova et al., 2005; Nepesov et al., 1999; Paris et al., 2012: 30). It is still used today in some areas, mostly to grow melons, but can also support fruit trees, grapes, and animal fodder, all of which are summer cultivated. Indeed, Gulyamov (1957: 59) proposed that the very beginnings of agriculture in the Khorezm oasis were founded on oytak farming of melons, a point which seems substantiated by the fact that the first probable farmers in the oasis, the Tazabag’yab and Suyargan, located their settlements to exploit takyr margins, marshy ground and natural river channels (Rapoport et al., 2000: 18–19; Tolstov, 1948a: 83–84, 1948b: 78; see also comments by Andrianov, 1969: 102–103). Babaev (2010: 163) notes that oytak farming resembles in many respects rain-fed farming in terms of its low labor and material costs. This is significant because it demonstrates that, as in the wetter regions of Central Asia, summer-dry zones such as Khorezm also had environments capable of supporting low-risk summer cultivation prior to the introduction of complex irrigation works in the first millennium BC. In this case, however, they were human-managed environments, rather than naturally occurring features of the landscape.

Millet translocation

A second point concerns the timing of the introduction of millet to arid Central Asia. Miller and colleagues argue that millet opened up new opportunities to produce a surplus from a staple summer cereal crop. The archaeobotanical record from Khorezm is sparse and makes it difficult to understand the first translocation of crops to this oasis (Table 1). We do not know from direct evidence what the earliest irrigators of Khorezm were cultivating, and we can only make inferences about the crops that may have been grown via oytak farming. But it is important also to be careful about conclusions drawn from negative data in a region with no tradition of systematic collection or scientific study of the archaeobotanical record.

Table 1.

Macrobotanical finds (as reported), Khorezm oasis up to the Arab conquests (8th century AD).

Location	Date	Cereals	Pulses	Fruits, nuts, vegetables	Fiber	Wild taxa	Reference
Dingild’zhe	5th century BC	Millet, barley (Hordeum vulgare L.), wheat?		Grape (Vitis vinifera ssp. sativa D.S.)			Vorob’eva (1973)
Farmstead 641, Djanbas kala	4th century BC	Millet		Grape			Vorob’eva and Gertman (1991: 46)
Koy-Krilgan-kala	4th–3rd century BC1st–4th century AD	Millet, millet husks, wheat?		Peach, grape, Persian olive,melon (ID based on field layouts only)			Andrianov (1969: 128); Tolstov and Vaynberg (1967: 48–60, 74, 79, 96)
Koy-Krilgan-kala	4th–3rd century BC1st–4th century AD	Barley, wheat?		Persian olive (Eleagnus angustifolia var. orientalis L.)		Ephedra, Betula, Alnus, gramineae, chenopodiaceae, Artemisia, Typha	Fedorova (1960)
Kara-tepe (Karakalpakstan)	4th–5th century AD	Millet (Panicum miliaceum L., Setaria italica (L.) P. Beauv.), barley (Hordeum vulgare L.), oat? (Avena sativa L.)	Grass pea (Lathyrus sativa/cicera), alfalfa? (Medicago sativus L.)	Grape (Vitis vinifera L.) melon? (Cucumis)	Cotton (Gossypium herbaceum/arboreum)	Amaranthus, Heliotropium, brassicaceae, Gypsophila, Chenopodium, Salsola, Suaeda, Convolvulus, Alhagi?, Teucrium?, Festuca?, Setaria viridis/verticillata, poaceae, Polygonum, Galium	Brite (2011: 339); Brite and Marston (2013); Brite et al. (in preparation)
Berkut-kala	6th–8th century AD	Barley				Alnus, gramineae, chenopodiaceae, Artemisia, Typha	Fedorova (1960)
Berkut kala oasis farmsteads	6th–8th century AD	Millet, barley, wheat, sorghum		Apricot, peach, plum, grape, pear, melon, apple	Cotton		Nerazik (1966)
Teshik kala	7th/8th century AD	Millet, barley, wheat, rice		Apricot, peach, grape, melon, pumpkin, cucumber	Cotton, silk cloth		Nerazik (1966); Tolstov (1948a)

See also Brite (2011: 339, Table 7.8) and Brite et al. (in preparation); Khorezm Expedition publications typically report generic names for crops only. Scientific names are given here only where they are provided in the cited sources.

This said, circumstantial evidence gives us every reason to believe that domesticated crops arrived in Khorezm sometime in the early or mid second millennium BC, likely via a secondary leg of the ‘Middle Asian Corridor’ (Stevens et al., 2016). Khorezmian-sourced turquoise and Kelteminar (Neolithic Khorezmian) pottery at Sarazm (Anthony, 2007: 388; Dolukhanov, 1986: 125, Figure 2; Isakov, 1994: 6; Kohl, 1984: 59–61; Lyonnet, 1996), together with wheat and barley remains at this site and at Zaman-Baba (which Kohl, 1984: 182–184 sees as a place of mixing of Bactria/Margiana and Tazabag’yab migrants; see also Kuzmina, 2008: 22–23) suggest that a route of exchange via the Zerevshan valley was established by the late third millennium BC (see also comments by Itina, 1977: 181–182). Crop translocation into Khorezm most likely occurred in the early to mid second millennium BC, at which time the fishing/hunting/pastoral economies at Kelteminar sites were replaced by Tazabag’yab sites with evidence of takyr inhabitation and irrigated farming.

When and how did millet enter into the Khorezmian assemblage? Looking again at the circumstantial evidence, cultural barriers suggest that an early arrival from the north is unlikely (Kuzmina, 2008: 21), and that millet probably entered Khorezm from the Middle Asian Corridor. Without a strong record of systematic archaeobotanical research, it is difficult to say exactly when this would have occurred; there is a noted lack of evidence for millet at Sarazm (fourth to third millennia BC, Spengler and Wilcox, 2013); however, its presence in the Murghab delta from the late third millennium BC at Adji Kui 1, Ojakly and sites 1211/1219 (Rouse and Cerasetti, 2014; Spengler et al., 2014, 2016a), and possibly in the lower Zerevshan valley by this time (Itina, 1977: 181; Kuzmina, 2008: 23), make it possible that millet was being grown by Tazabag’yab agropastoralists in the mid second millennium BC. Not unlike processes on the Tibetan plateau, millet may have served as a ‘pioneer crop’ that facilitated the movement of other cereals into Khorezm (D’Alpoim Guedes et al., 2014: 265), or its arrival may have followed the translocation of summer-grown spring barley from northeastern Iran (D’Alpoim Guedes et al., 2014; Harris, 2010, 75–76; Jones et al., 2008, 2012; Morrell and Clegg, 2007). As noted above, the earliest, direct evidence of millet seed remains does not appear in Khorezm until the mid first millennium BC (5th century BC) at the site of Digild’zhe (Vorob’eva, 1973). By this time, it is already being grown under conditions of irrigation, sedentism, and alongside other domesticated crops. From this point forward, millet appears to be a chief staple crop of the region and is found throughout the entire sequence of the first millennium BC and first millennium AD (where archaeobotanical finds are reported, see Table 1; Brite, 2011: 339, Table 7.8; Brite et al., in preparation).

Admittedly, Miller et al. already considered that Central Asians were capable of growing summer irrigated crops before the first millennium BC, and they identify several sites in the summer-dry zone where millet was being cultivated in the second millennium BC. The evidence from Khorezm suggests, however, that this earlier cultivation in the desert oases was not simply an ‘anomaly’ (Miller et al., 2016: 5), but rather may have been an integral part of risk-reducing, multi-resource strategies comparable to contemporaneous practices in Central Asia’s mountain corridor zone. Indeed, Kuzmina (2008: 109) sees the role of abundant ungulates in Kazakhstan and abundant fish in Khorezm as broadly comparable in terms of their impacts on the adoption of agriculture. The clarification is important because, as we argue below, pre-existing cultivation and multi-resource strategies significantly impacted the evolution of Khorezmian agricultural and social systems in the first millennium BC and first millennium AD. As has been postulated for the Murghab oasis, risk-averse diet breadth appears to have been maintained in Khorezm (perhaps unevenly across the population) during the expansion of irrigated agriculture and social transformations of this period (Markofsky et al., 2016: 17; Rouse and Cerasetti, 2016: 11–12).

The Khorezmian polity, first millennium BC through first millennium AD

Statecraft

The final issue to be addressed concerns the timing and nature of polity development (i.e. the appearance of monumental architecture, complex irrigation, markers of hierarchy and status, and evidence of long-distance exchange) in the Khorezm oasis and its relationship to agricultural change. Three important observations help to characterize this relationship in the first millennium BC and first millennium AD.

First, large fortified sites appear suddenly, with no local precursors, at the site of Kyuzely-gyr and later, Kalaly-gyr 1, west of the Amu Darya River in the Prisarykamysh delta (Rapoport and Lapirov-Skoblo, 1963: 143; Rapoport et al., 2000: 25–29; Vishnevskaya and Rapoport, 1997; Tolstov, 1962: 89–117). Complex irrigation works (long and wide trunk canals that rely on gravity flow, with headworks, drainage outlets, and feeder canals) are present for the first time at these sites, but they also appear simultaneously east of the river without a fortified center (at Bazar-kala, Tolstov, 1962: 104). In both cases, the new irrigation systems seem to have evolved from previous ones, as a response to receding deltaic channels in the same areas that previously had marshy conditions and which were exploited for pastoralism, fishing, and cultivation in the second millennium BC (Andrianov, 2016 [1969]: 157, 184–187, Figure 41; Lewis, 1966: 482–484). We believe that this initial scaling-up of irrigation size and complexity was a kind of landesque capital development in response to environmental change that did not necessitate a fundamental shift in subsistence practices (Blaikie and Brookfield, 1987; Brookfield, 1984; Widgren, 2007; Widgren and Håkansson, 2016). Throughout the first millennium BC and first millennium AD at Kyuzely-gyr and other Prisarykamysh sites, in spite of the new canals there remain few traces of ancient agricultural fields; the emphasis on pastoralism continues; settlements lay in dispersed, low-density patterns reflective of semi-mobility; and the landscape is marked with numerous ‘nomadic’ kurgan burial sites (Negus Cleary, 2015a; Tsalkin, 1966: 108–157; Vaynberg, 1979a, 1979b). Monumental art at Kyuzeli-gyr and Kalaly-gyr 1 and textual sources indicate links with the Achaemenid Empire (Betts, 2006; Betts et al., 2009, 2016; Helms et al., 2001, 2002; Kidd et al., 2008; Yagodin et al., 2010). This suggests to us that the power of newly established elites in Khorezm was not, at least initially, built upon a shift to intensive farming, but rather may have come from exchange.

Second, when a Khorezmian polity coalesces more clearly on the right-bank in the Antique period (Akcha Darya delta, 4th century BC through the 4th century AD), the archaeological evidence does not point to a ‘Mesopotamian model’ of cohesive, sedentary, authoritarian control over agricultural land and surplus (Lamberg-Karlovsky, 1994; Stride et al., 2009). The Antique Khorezmian qalas, the fortified mudbrick enclosures that represented elite power, were not built for year round, permanent use (Honeychurch and Amartuvshin, 2007; Khozhaniyazov, 2006; Negus Cleary, 2008, 2013; Rogers et al., 2005). Monumental visual art within these structures shows that those who declared themselves ‘kings’ proclaimed a syncretic view of rulership, which drew its legitimacy in part from the steppe nomadic world (Betts et al., in press; Kidd, 2011, 2012; Kidd and Betts, 2010; Kidd and Brite, 2015; Kidd et al., 2008, 2012; Yagodin et al., 2010). The small scale of storage, found only in domestic contexts inside the qalas, suggests there were no large storage facilities on par with other agricultural states (Manzanilla and Rothman, 2016; Paulette, 2016) and that Khorezmian elites did not derive their wealth and status from surplus accumulation (for examples of Khorezmian storage, see Kolyakov, 1991: 110–123; Mambetullaev, 1978: 83–87).

Barfield (1990) has proposed that nomadic elites on the steppe were often focused on surplus redistribution rather than accumulation, relying on trade to maintain control and legitimize their rule (see also Sneath, 2007). We suggest that elite land development in Khorezm (qalas and large canals) may have been similarly directed toward trade. The lack of storage, the non-permanent habitation of the qalas, and the close spatial ties between each qala and one trunk canal indicate to us that Khorezmian elites were concerned with agricultural surplus production only insomuch as it could support their enterprising activities; that is, surplus that could produce goods for exchange and feed a population supporting their redistributive and ceremonial activities (see also Di Cosmo, 1994: 1102, 1104, who discusses the role of agriculture at steppe ‘trading centers’ to facilitate connections with nomads; Alizadeh, 2010; Honeychurch, 2014: 308–311; Porter, 2012 all also offer models which may be relevant here). Significantly, by the early Islamic period Khorezm is well known as a hub or a redistributor of long distance trade (Beckwith, 2009: 326–328; Christian, 2000: 3–4; Frye, 2005: 91; Gunder Frank, 1992: 68; Le Strange, 1930: 447, 458–459).

All of this information leads us to a third and final point, that this kind of outward-looking surplus production by the Khorezmian elites in the first millennium BC and first millennium AD did not preclude multi-resource, risk-averse, agropastoral production in their midst. Many smaller and less powerful communities appear to have continued to practice pastoralism, small-scale agriculture, and other kinds of production in Antique Khorezm alongside the qalas and large canals (Bolelov, 1997, 2005a, 2005b, 2006; Negus Cleary, 2015a; Nerazik, 1976; Vaynberg, 1979b). In the Murghab delta of southern Turkmenistan in the same period, detailed survey, paleobotanical, and geoarchaeological analyses have shown that there was a similar, dualistic model of oasis inhabitation by elites and rural agropastoralists (Markofsky et al., 2016: 17; Rouse and Cerasetti, 2016: 11–12). It seems highly plausible therefore that in the southern Central Asian oases, diverse production systems were maintained even as complex irrigation works were established in the first millennium BC and first millennium AD (Beckwith, 2009: 326–328; Brite, 2016; Stride, 2007; Stride et al., 2009).

Concluding remarks

While we appreciate Miller et al.’s (2016) insights for the broad geographical and environmental patterns they reveal, we nevertheless maintain that millet cultivation was not mutually exclusive of diet breadth, risk aversion, mobility, pastoralism, or steppe culture in the summer-dry regions of Central Asia in the first millennium BC. Likewise, low intensity farming for risk reduction was not the sole purview of northern peoples in this region in prehistory.

If we were to take a hard-line approach to the evidence and assume that millet did not appear in Khorezm until the 5th century BC (based on the seed remains at Dingild’zhe), then we might conclude that millet cultivation arrived in Khorezm with a bang – quickly incorporated into a pre-existing system of irrigation agriculture, it would have taken off as people realized the surplus potential of this drought-resistant, easy to grow, summer cereal. The introduction of millet in the 5th century BC would have offered something new that could help fund the activities of Khorezmian elites, helping a polity to coalesce on the right-bank of the Amu Darya River in settlement systems closely tied to irrigation agriculture.

The difficulty with this picture is that we know that statecraft was already established before the 5th century BC in Khorezm, and existed only on the left-bank where its primary revenue stream must have been something other than agricultural crop surplus. This suggests to us that the political and economic foundations of power in Khorezm rested upon a more diverse system of local production, which included irrigation agriculture, but only in measured amounts and alongside fishing, pastoralism, hunting, and other forms of cultivation. Connections to the Achaemenid state suggest that trade may have played a critical role in the incipient development of the Khorezm polity (Betts et al., 2016). Although irrigation agriculture received considerably more emphasis after this time, given the ongoing pastoralism on the left-bank (Negus Cleary, 2015a; Vaynberg, 1979b) and the dispersed, short-term nature of rural occupations on the right-bank in the Antique period (Bolelov, 1997, 2005a, 2006; Negus Cleary, 2015b; Nerazik, 1976), we argue that what came before mattered significantly to the evolution of agriculture and statecraft in this oasis.

We therefore propose an alternative scenario that summer millet cultivation was established in Khorezm as part of a low-investment, risk buffering strategy sometime in the second or early first millennium BC prior to its first appearance at Dingild’zhe. We suggest that millet could have been readily incorporated into earlier forms of oytak farming in Khorezm, mixed into a regime that included the cultivation of other summer crops such as melon, and possibly, spring barley. This would have been only part of a much more diverse repertoire of food-production strategies already established by Neolithic times at Kelteminar sites, and likely provided a supplement to primary activities focused around fishing, hunting, and pastoralism.

This scenario indeed aligns nicely with Miller and colleagues’ points (citing Esther Boserup, 2016: 6–7) about how agricultural technologies may be known to people long before they are adopted across a society (see also Boivin et al., 2012: 455–456; Van der Veen, 2010). It also provides a clearer antecedent to the later bifurcation of elite and rural agropastoral lifeways that have been observed in this and other Central Asian desert oases in the first millennium BC and first millennium AD (Markofsky et al., 2016: 17; Rouse and Cerasetti, 2016: 11–12), and helps to explain how a class of nomadic elites could have evolved from an oasis context like Khorezm (Betts et al., in press; Kidd et al., 2012; Lamberg-Karlovsky, 1994). Starting from a diverse production base, Khorezmian statecraft would have evolved as emerging elites gained prestige in organizing their communities to respond to environmental change. Thus empowered, some were successful in building relationships with an expanding Achaemenid state. As the needs for tributary and surplus exchange increased, elites put more pressure on local resource production. They expanded complex irrigation works to more areas that they could control, creating infrastructure and trade links that further expanded and reinforced their authority.

A key difference between this scenario and that proposed by Miller et al. (2016: 7–8) is the role that agropastoral extensification played in spreading millet cultivation across Khorezm in the first millennium BC. New systems of irrigation may have opened new land to production (increasing the total volume of surplus), but it did not mean that the practices of a diverse range of Khorezmian fishers, hunters, and animal grazers changed fundamentally across the board. Labor and capital investments in agriculture probably did not increase across all of society and in the same ways (Erickson, 2006: 336–338; Morrison, 1994: 131, 143). Many Khorezmians appear to have continued fishing, hunting, and herding as they engaged in the summer cultivation of millet and other crops, much as they had done for a millennium prior. Recognizing this tenacity of agropastoralism in ancient Khorezm can better account for the totality of the region’s existing archaeological record and more importantly, it can explain the cultural continuities, expressed in art and architecture, that this region shared with the steppe.

The recent proliferation of studies on ancient Central Asia have helped to articulate the region’s ecological and human diversity and its importance to the development of agriculture in prehistory (Doumani et al., 2015; Frachetti, 2013; Lightfoot et al., 2013, 2015; Markofsky et al., 2016; Motuzaite Matuzeviciute et al., 2015; Murphy et al., 2013; Rouse and Cerasetti, 2014, 2016; Spengler, 2015; Spengler and Wilcox, 2013; Spengler et al., 2016a, 2016b; Stevens et al., 2016; Svyatko et al., 2013; Ventresca Miller et al., 2014). We welcome these new studies for the greater precision and depth they provide in understanding the rich culture that existed across this great continental expanse. We have intended with this paper to add the Khorezm oasis to the increasingly long list of places in Central Asia that are now being considered as instrumental to the study of complex societies (Frachetti, 2012; Honeychurch, 2014; Lindsay and Greene, 2013). Miller et al. (2016) have proffered an exciting theory about the spread of millet cultivation across Central Asia and its significance to social evolution. We hope that our comments can help to provide further nuance and detail to substantiate their ideas. Moreover, we hope that this information can add to the growing recognition that Central Asia is a region worthy of discovery in its own right, which offers insights to archaeology that stand apart from those already well-established in centers of Old World scholarship in West and East Asia.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The authors thank the authors of the original publication on which this commentary was based: Naomi F. Miller, Robert N. Spengler and Michael Frachetti, for inspiring dialogue; and the two anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments that greatly improved our arguments.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

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