Abstract
his paper presents the discovery of the first archaeological evidence
of early historic transhumant settlement at the Shati Das. The site is
located on the left bank of Indus River near the famous Shatial rock
carving sites at District Upper Kohistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa
Province, Pakistan. The settlements are located around dried-up lakes
at Shati Das. The present discovery shed lights on _ possible
contemporary settlements of the Shatial and Shatial Das rock carving
sites. The abandoned settlements are spread around 21 hectares and
the structures within, based upon the construction methods and buried
nature, belonged to two chronological phases. The settlement of both
phases are mainly located in the south and south eastern sides of the
lakes. More than 50 percent of the structures are less than 100 square
metres in area, while few of the structures cover more than 500 square
metres area. Almost all the structures seem to have been divided into
two functional areas for animals and humans. The lack of chronometric
and environmental datasets from the site hinders the accurate dating of
the site. However, the settlements were probably contemporary with the
rock carving sites at Shatial and might have belonged to 1° millennium
CE.
Muhammad Zahir , Ijaz Khan, Feryal Ali Gauhar, Abdul Ghani Khan , M. Shahid Khan Khalil. (2020) Archaeological Evidence of Possible Transhumant Settlements at Shati Das — Shatial, District Upper Kohistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan, Journal of Asian Civilizations, Volume 43, Issue 2.
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