A Quantitative Assessment of the Topography of the Berkut-kalinsky Oasis (Chorasmia) in Relation to the Goals of Historical and Archaeological Research
The spatial and economic structure of the Berkut-kalinsky oasis was investigated in this study with the using of statistical methods. As a result, an oasis scheme was drawn up, taking into account the location of various objects distributed into classes, which is important for further paleoeconomic analysis. Two parameters are considered as classifiers describing the economic power of the castle - the total area occupied by the monument and the area of its donjon. The verification showed that both of these classifiers are correlated with each other, and therefore provide similar results. However, the most versatile and resistant to measurement error is the area of the castle. It is significant that the monuments are functionally divided into two types according to their location on the territory of the oasis. The first group includes large buildings, which may have controlled the main channel of the channel and the branches of individual branches from it. The second type includes all other settlements of the oasis, which, according to their economic charac-teristics, are ranked into three classes. The most economically developed monuments are located in the center of the oasis; monuments of other types are grouped around the central area along the perimeter of the oasis. The distribution of monuments demonstrates the peculiarities of the location of residential and economic objects of this economic microdistrict. The proposed research method and the results obtained create a promising basis for the further archaeological and paleoeconomic research.