A society organized in death
In the sun-scorched plains of southern Uzbekistan lies the Bronze Age settlement of Djarkutan, a major center of the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex (BMAC), also known as the Oxus Civilization. Flourishing between approximately 2100 and 1500 BCE, this proto-urban site once featured a citadel, a palace, residential and craft quarters, and a monumental fire temple. Surrounding this ancient settlement are extensive cemeteries, one of which shows a burial practice found almost nowhere else in the world. The graves are organized not by family or social status, but by age at death.
The largest of these burial grounds, Necropolis 4a, contains at least 719 individual graves dating from the 20th to 16th centuries BCE. Through spatial and statistical analysis of the grave locations, archaeologists uncovered a distinct pattern. The cemetery is arranged in a series of concentric circles. In the central-most area, graves contain the remains of infants and very young children. Subsequent, wider circles hold the graves of older children, then adolescents, and finally, adults are buried on the outermost periphery. This systematic sorting by age suggests a deeply held set of beliefs about the life cycle and its relationship to the structure of the community and the cosmos. The reason for this specific arrangement remains unknown, but it points to a society where age was a primary organizing principle, even in death.