Uzbekistan's Mountain Iron City May Be the Lost Marsmanda of Medieval Accounts

A possible name for a city above the Silk Road

Archaeologists investigating Tugunbulak in the mountain ranges of eastern Uzbekistan say the settlement may be Marsmanda, a city that medieval writers described as a cold mountain center for iron production and regular trade fairs. At roughly 7,000 feet above sea level, the site covers about 300 acres and dates from the sixth through the eleventh centuries. Its scale suggests that an upland once considered too remote for major urban life supported a substantial industrial city.

Industrial kilns, thick deposits of iron slag and rocks rich in iron ore have given researchers a strong reason to consider the identification. Medieval Arabic and Persian geographers described Marsmanda as a place where rivers froze and merchants gathered to buy iron objects and weapons. Tugunbulak combines the cold mountain setting with extensive evidence of metalworking.

The investigation is led by Michael Frachetti of Washington University in St. Louis, Farhod Maksudov of the National Center of Archaeology of Uzbekistan and Sanjyot Mehendale of the University of California, Berkeley. Their work brings together excavation and mapping by drones equipped with lidar, a technology that measures the ground using laser pulses.

Excavations since 2022 have begun checking the mapped features against what survives beneath the surface. Researchers have recorded corridors, terraced platforms, defensive towers and footprints of buildings with multiple stories across four distinct sectors. Strong walls and towers surround parts of the settlement, while the traces of workshops suggest an economy connected to Silk Road markets across Asia.

Tugunbulak's possible identification as Marsmanda remains a proposal. The match between its location, industrial remains and medieval descriptions has surprised researchers, but further work is needed to establish the city's historical name and understand how its economy operated.

What the walls and terraces reveal

Tugunbulak extends across a broad slope descending toward alpine pastures. Within its walls, archaeologists recorded narrow passageways, wide plazas and rows of terraced platforms that supported houses. The arrangement gives a picture of a city shaped to fit its mountain terrain.

A central stronghold occupies the highest point. Curtain walls and watchtowers surround it, controlling entry to the complex. Corridors direct movement toward gates and plazas, while the wider layout suggests deliberate planning and an authority capable of organizing construction on a large scale.

Hundreds of terraced structures lie around the core defenses. Researchers interpret them as a likely mixture of homes, workshops and storage spaces. Their distribution across four urban sectors provides a framework for examining where people lived, where goods were made and how movement through the city was managed.

Grasslands, erosion and grazing had blurred many of these outlines for centuries. A place that could look like an ordinary rolling mountain slope from the ground has emerged as an extensive urban settlement when mapped in detail.

How laser mapping exposed the city's plan

Lidar stands for light detection and ranging. The equipment sends out rapid laser pulses and measures distance to build a precise model of the surface in three dimensions. Software can filter vegetation from the measurements, exposing small rises and depressions that mark buried walls, roads and buildings.

Drones carrying lidar equipment gave the team a detailed digital map of Tugunbulak. The scans traced fortifications, internal roadways and an interconnected network of terraces. Field teams then checked those features on the ground, using the map to guide targeted excavation.

The combination matters because mapping and digging answer different questions. Lidar reveals the shape and extent of the settlement, while excavation examines the remains of buildings and the objects and deposits within them. Together, they are helping researchers connect the city's visible plan with its occupation and industrial activity.

Iron production at the heart of the settlement

Excavators have encountered traces of metalworking throughout Tugunbulak. Furnaces or kilns used for smelting and smithing lie near mounds of slag, the glassy waste left when metal is extracted from ore. Lumps of stone rich in iron provide another part of the production chain.

Industrial debris is concentrated inside a main tower and across workshops. Alongside iron weapons and tools, these deposits suggest that the settlement produced weapons, tools and fittings for regional markets connected to Silk Road caravans. The extent of the remains points to an industry that reached beyond the surrounding mountain valleys.

Iron production in this period relied on bloomery furnaces. Workers heated ore with charcoal, allowing oxygen to bond with impurities that drained away as slag. The process left a spongy mass of iron called a bloom. Smiths repeatedly hammered and reheated that mass to remove more slag and turn it into blades, nails and fittings.

Charcoal was the essential fuel, and producing it required steady supplies of wood. Forests around Tugunbulak were therefore a critical resource. Heavy production could have put those woodlands under pressure and forced workers to travel farther to obtain fuel.

Workshop activity can also leave hammer scale, tiny flakes of iron produced during smithing, on floors. Such traces help archaeologists reconstruct stages of production. At Tugunbulak, extensive slag deposits combined with weapon parts and tools are central to the argument that metalworking supported a much wider trading economy.

Tools, coins and a warrior buried with his horse

Finds from the first excavation seasons include iron arrowheads, knives, tools and coins. These objects connect the city's industrial remains with everyday work, exchange and armed activity. They also provide material for studying the people who occupied its houses and workshops.

A burial contained the remains of a mounted warrior interred with his horse and grave goods. The burial practice aligns with Turkic traditions known across the steppe in the early medieval era. It adds a human dimension to a site otherwise described largely through walls, terraces and industrial waste.

Ceramic styles and personal objects point to contact between Turkic pastoralists and settled communities, including traders with cultural roots in the Sogdian world. The finds suggest a mixed society in which farmers, herders, miners and metallurgists lived alongside one another.

The region was under the sway of Turkic powers that later gave way to the Qarakhanids. Merchants with Sogdian roots likely moved through the uplands, while local communities managed pastures, mines and furnaces. Tugunbulak's objects and buildings allow researchers to examine those relationships at the level of a particular settlement.

A second mountain city nearby

Tashbulak, a smaller but well organized city, lies just a few miles from Tugunbulak on the same mountain shelf. The team mapped a settlement of about 30 acres there. Both centers sit above 7,000 feet and were occupied from roughly the sixth through the eleventh centuries, when caravans carried goods across Central Asia and the Middle East.

Tugunbulak's approximately 300 acres make its mapped area about ten times that of Tashbulak's 30 acres. Few cities in Central Asia reached a comparable size at such an elevation, and Tugunbulak was larger than many lowland peers. The comparison helps explain why its discovery changes the picture of urban life in these mountains.

The two centers likely shared labor, resources and routes through the high passes. Their proximity suggests a regional network in which settlements drew on mountain pastures, mineral deposits and caravan connections rather than operating as isolated outposts.

Why Marsmanda is a convincing possibility

Medieval Arabic and Persian accounts place Marsmanda in cold mountains where rivers froze during winter. They also describe monthly fairs offering iron objects and weapons. These are specific clues about both the environment and the city's economic role.

Tugunbulak fits those clues through its high elevation and the widespread remains of iron production. Its scale, workshops and defensive structures add to the case for a major mountain center tied to trade. If the identification holds, Marsmanda would rank among the largest known mountain cities connected to the Silk Road.

Researchers plan to investigate administrative areas that could yield inscriptions or seals. Coin hoards could help establish dates more precisely, while excavation of industrial quarters could clarify production volumes. Those finds would help connect the archaeological settlement more closely to the place described in medieval writing.

Field laboratories will analyze the chemistry of slag to identify ore sources and follow the movement of metal through workshops into finished goods. This work could explain how Tugunbulak obtained its raw materials and organized an industry capable of supplying buyers outside the immediate area.

Herders and metalworkers in the same economy

Earlier scholarship placed great lowland cities such as Samarkand, Bukhara and Kashgar at the center of Silk Road exchange. Mountain ranges were often treated as barriers that caravans crossed quickly. Tugunbulak and Tashbulak present a different picture: highland communities produced valuable materials, guarded strategic passes and connected herders, miners and merchants.

Pastoralists, people whose livelihoods depend on herding animals, could move across slopes, guide pack animals and use seasonal pastures. At Tugunbulak, the archaeological picture also includes mining, charcoal production and metalworking. Mobility and knowledge of local resources could support both herding and industrial activity.

The settlement therefore blurs a simple division between nomads and people living permanently in towns. Its mixed community appears to have combined skills that suited a mountain economy, with workshops and houses linked to resources beyond the walls.

Iron gave that economy a broad range of possible customers. Arrowheads, spearpoints and blades supplied armies. Bits, stirrups and horseshoes equipped cavalry and caravans. Axes, nails, plowshares and sickles supported agriculture and construction. A city making such goods at scale could attract buyers from different directions and cultures.

Why activity faded in the eleventh century

Radiocarbon results and field stratigraphy, the study of successive archaeological layers, indicate that activity at Tugunbulak and Tashbulak tapered off in the first half of the eleventh century. Researchers are considering several pressures that may have overlapped.

Large quantities of charcoal could have depleted nearby forests, increasing the distance and effort needed to collect fuel. Shorter growing seasons or harsher winters could have affected pastures and travel. Political fragmentation could have shifted caravan routes and buyers, while new competitors may have reduced demand for the cities' iron goods.

The cause of the decline is still being investigated. Environmental sampling, timber studies and settlement surveys across the wider region will help test these explanations. The work links the question of why people left with the resources, weather and trading connections that had supported urban life in the first place.

A different fate beside Lake Issyk Kul

Research at Lake Issyk Kul in Kyrgyzstan provides a comparison with another mountain Silk Road hub. Underwater surveys mapped a medieval trading center now submerged a short distance from shore. Excavations documented buildings made from fired bricks, a large millstone, wooden beams and a Muslim cemetery with burials oriented toward Mecca.

Researchers link that city's demise to a powerful earthquake in the fifteenth century that devastated the settlement as lake levels rose. Its lakeshore setting and later destruction differ from the plateau settlements of Tugunbulak and Tashbulak, where researchers are examining a gradual decline centuries earlier.

The comparison shows the variety of places that supported Silk Road trade. Mountain corridors included plazas for fairs, workshops producing iron and ceramics, religious centers and stopping places for caravans. Some cities suffered environmental shocks; others faced political changes or exhaustion of resources. Lidar and underwater surveys are making traces of these settlements visible where they can be difficult to recognize from the ground.

The excavation timeline and next investigations

Tugunbulak's story spans both medieval occupation and the modern investigation. The main periods described by the archaeological work are:

• Sixth through eleventh centuries: Tugunbulak and nearby Tashbulak were occupied in the Uzbek highlands.
• First half of the eleventh century: radiocarbon results and archaeological layers indicate that activity at both settlements tapered off.
• Since 2022: excavations at Tugunbulak have checked survey results and begun uncovering life within the walls.

The team plans to expand excavation into administrative districts, craft sectors and domestic neighborhoods. Detailed metallographic study, examining the structure of metals, will investigate blooms, slag and finished objects. Researchers aim to determine whether craftspeople produced steel or mainly iron with a low carbon content, and how they treated and finished blades.

Geoarchaeological sampling will help reconstruct the former landscape, including woodlands used for charcoal production and quarries supplying ore to furnaces. Regional surveys will seek other settlements at high elevations and the caravan tracks that may have connected them. Additional linked cities could reveal a continuous urban zone across the mountain belt.

Training and collaboration with Uzbek institutions will be central to that work. Conservation is also needed for walls, towers and terraces now exposed to the elements. The investigation must preserve the remains while examining how a large industrial community developed in a setting long regarded as peripheral to city life.

Key Points

• Tugunbulak covers about 300 acres at roughly 7,000 feet in eastern Uzbekistan and was occupied from the sixth through the eleventh centuries.
• Kilns, furnaces, iron slag and ore point to extensive metalworking connected to regional Silk Road markets.
• Drone lidar mapped four urban sectors, fortifications, corridors and hundreds of terraced structures.
• Finds include arrowheads, knives, tools, coins and a warrior buried with his horse.
• The site's cold mountain setting and iron industry fit medieval descriptions of Marsmanda, but its historical name remains under investigation.
• Nearby Tashbulak covers about 30 acres, roughly one tenth of Tugunbulak's mapped area.
• Activity at both settlements declined in the first half of the eleventh century; researchers are testing environmental, political and commercial explanations.
• Further excavation, metal analysis and regional surveys will examine production, urban connections and the landscape that supported the cities.