Узбекистаны өндөр уулаас дундад зууны үеийн томоохон хотын туурь илрэв

At an altitude of more than 7,000 feet in the mountains of southeastern Uzbekistan, the terrain looks, at ground level, like rocky slopes and scattered juniper trees. When archaeologists flew drones equipped with laser scanners over the area, the contours of the land sharpened into something else entirely: stone walls, straight avenues, and the angular footprints of large buildings buried under centuries of erosion and sediment.

The site, known as Tugunbulak, had appeared in regional survey records before, but its actual scale remained unknown until a team led by Michael D. Frachetti, an archaeologist at Washington University in St. Louis, spent multiple field seasons mapping it with UAV-lidar technology. The laser pulses stripped away the visual noise of the uneven terrain and revealed a planned urban settlement far larger than previous estimates had suggested.

Laser Mapping Exposed a Fortified Medieval City

The data from at least 22 drone flights, each pass stitched together by software into a detailed composite, resolved into a fortified urban center covering roughly 300 acres. The team documented monumental walls, terraced areas, and a grid-like layout consistent with deliberate city planning. For a settlement sitting at 2,130 meters above sea level, the size challenged long-held assumptions about where major urban centers could develop in premodern Central Asia.

The resolution of the lidar maps was precise enough to trace individual wall segments and building footprints. “We could tease out very nuanced lines,” Frachetti said. That precision allowed the team to place excavation trenches with far greater accuracy than conventional field surveys would have permitted, reducing guesswork and focusing resources on the most informative parts of the site.

When excavation crews broke ground, the evidence they found explained the city’s reason for existing in such a remote location. Trenches across the site contained thick layers of black slag, the glassy waste product left behind after iron is extracted from ore. Inside one structure, researchers uncovered kilns and furnaces still surrounded by juniper charcoal and iron pellets. The scale of the operation pointed to an organized iron production industry, one that would have required consistent fuel sources, trained metalworkers, and a supply chain capable of moving goods down the mountains.

A Medieval “City of Iron” Known to Arab Geographers

The archaeological findings matched descriptions left behind by medieval geographers. Tenth-century writer Ibn Hawqal had described a cold mountain settlement called “Marsmanda”, a place without gardens but known for its meadows and, implicitly, its metalwork. The descriptions had never been precisely located on a map, but the iron production evidence at Tugunbulak brought the historical and physical records into alignment.

The city appears to have flourished between the sixth and eleventh centuries, a period when Silk Road trade routes connected East Asia to the Mediterranean. Tugunbulak sat roughly 70 miles east of Samarkand, one of the major lowland trade centers of the region. Historians have traditionally placed the drivers of the Silk Road network in lowland oases. A mountain city of this scale and industrial output complicates that picture, suggesting that highland production centers played a more significant role in the medieval economy of Eurasia than previously recognized.

The graves on the slopes near the settlement added another dimension to the site. Radiocarbon dating placed the oldest excavated burial at around 720 AD. One cemetery held approximately 650 graves in a concentrated area. Burial patterns varied across the site: some bodies faced west, animal remains appeared alongside human ones in certain graves, and grave goods were generally rare. The researchers interpreted these variations as evidence of a population whose beliefs and political affiliations shifted during the city’s long occupation.

What Sustained the City and Why It Stopped

Sustaining iron production at high altitude required more than ore and labor. The furnaces consumed juniper charcoal continuously, which meant the city depended on reliable access to highland woodlands. Water supply, ore transport, and stable political conditions for moving goods to lowland markets were equally necessary. For roughly 500 years, those conditions apparently held, and the workshops kept running.

Around 1050 AD, the furnaces went cold. The site showed no evidence of a sudden disaster. Instead, the abandonment appears to have been gradual, which the researchers interpreted as the result of compounding pressures rather than a single cause. Drought, deforestation from years of charcoal production, or shifts in the political and trade networks crossing Central Asia may each have contributed to eroding the city’s economic base. Without the conditions that made large-scale iron production viable, the population had no reason to stay, and the walls and avenues slowly disappeared under the hillside.

Frachetti and his team plan to return for deeper excavations targeting the administrative center of the city. They aim to recover seals, written records, or other materials that could clarify who governed the settlement and how it connected to the broader political structures of medieval Eurasia. Laboratory analysis of metal scraps may also reveal the firing temperatures and ore sources the city’s smiths used, while pottery styles and coin inscriptions could trace the reach and timing of the city’s Silk Road trade contacts.

The full findings were published in the journal Nature.

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