L’evidenza archeologica dei grandi commerci in Sogdiana lungo le Vie della Seta

Sogdiana is a historical central Asian region laying between present southern Uzbekistan and western Tadžikistan. It was crossed by the Silk Roads: the term was coined by the German geographer ferdinand von Richthofen to indicate a network of trade routes linking the eastern and western territories of the ancient world. The first known commercial exchanges in central Asia on a regular base date back to the second millennium Bc, but in the second century Bc the Silk Roads inaugurated a new era in the trade throughout Eurasia. It is now accepted that a great number of land and sea routes made this network, that was used by merchants for a longer time than initially thought. Although the von Richthofen term is conventionally still employed in modern studies, scholars agree that silk was only one of the several carried goods. Sogdiana could acquire a peculiar role in the central Asian context, acting as a leading cultural intermediary between the different worlds represented by goods and people – merchants, artists, scientists, priests – that travelled along the Silk Roads. from the mid-sixth century Bc, Sogdiana was part of the Achaemenid Empire and was ruled nominally by the satrap of Bactria. After the fall of the empire and the death of Alexander the Great, the region was included in the Greco-Bactrian domains and passed through a period of great prosperity.