The article dwells on the results of field research in 2020, on the territory of Khujand fortress. Excavations were carried out in those parts of the fortress where reconstruction work is planned. The pits revealed the sequence of cultural layers of antiquity and the Middle Ages. In a pit near the northern fortress wall, artifacts from the 3rd-2nd centuries BC were studied, including a section of an early fortress wall. The complex of finds contains many fragments of ceramics. The artifacts have thin walls and are covered with red engobe. Some of them are polished. The found ceramics is similar to the complexes from other ancient monuments of Central Asia.
Thus, excavations on the territory of Khujand fortress provided interesting materials on stratigraphy. It is especially important to identify the cultural layers of the middle and second half of the 1st millennium BC. The materials obtained indicate to the existence of layers of the Archaic and ancient urban settlement under the modern fortress and, thus, once again they confirm the localization of Alexandria Eskhata (the city built by Alexander the Macedonian on the banks of the Syr Darya) in the suburbs of ancient Khujand.
Khujand fortress, field season, archaeological excavations, stratigraphy, ancient ceramics, Alexandria Eskhata
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