Dalverzin - tepa

The settlement site is located in the Surkhandarya river valley, on the bank of Karmakisai, in 7 km to the north from the present-day district centre Shurchi. Initially, the settlement was built in the southern part of the sand-and-loess plateau in the 3rd-2nd centuries B.C. Researchers suppose that the fortress wall of the Greco-Bactrian period surrounded an already existing settlement with an irregular and dense layout (a polyhedron in a plan; 170-200 m across). The destruction of the Greco-Bactrian setlement is associated with the invasion of Bactria by the Sakas (140-130 B.C.). Its revival began in the Early Kushan period. The settlement was surrounded with fortress wall, which enclosed a rectangle with an area 32.5 hectares, built with a view to the further grouth of the settlement. New fortifications were built on the remnants of the Greco-Bactrian walls, used as a platform. Since then the initial settlement served as the citadel. G.A. Pugachenkova considered Dalverzin to have been the crown capital of the Kushan Khodzo mentioned in written sources.


The flourishing of the city falls on the 2nd - the first half of the 3rd centuries A.D. It had regular layout, with clear-cut residential area of rich and poor townsmen. At the time the settlement had temples of different religions. In the centre of the city stood a Buddhist temple, and near the northern wall - a temple of a local goddess. A residential neighbourhood of potters occupied the south-western part of the settlement. A Zoroastrian naus and a Buddhist shrine have survived in the northern part of the settlement.


The settlement was probably destroyed in the second half of the 3rd century A.D. (as a result of a compaign of Sassanid troops).


In the 6th-7th centuries the citadel was temporarily made habitable and existed as an unfortified settlement. Burials in the fallen parts of the fortress wall of the Kushan period date back to that period of time.