The ancient settlement "Toprak-Kala" (1st–4th centuries)

Toprak-Kala stands in the Ellikkala district of Karakalpakstan, on a plain closed off by the Sultanuizdag hills. It is one of the most significant monuments of Khorezmian building, of the first to fourth centuries AD; the archaeologist S. P. Tolstov identified it in 1938. The city was large and served as a dynastic capital, with a population of about three thousand.

The name means the earthen, or dusty, fortress. In plan it is a true rectangle of 500 by 350 metres, with walls up to twenty metres high and twelve thick and many square towers. Everything is built of large mud brick. Judging by the result, the Khorezmians commanded techniques that turned ordinary clay into exceptionally durable structures: small desert stones went into a reinforcing layer, and river sand kept the interiors dry by absorbing moisture.

The north-western part is taken up by a vast palace with a courtyard 180 metres square, fortified with three thirty-metre watchtowers. Inside, archaeologists found several halls, among them the Hall of Kings — a sanctuary holding twenty-three massive clay figures — and the Hall of Dark-Skinned Warriors, still unexplained: by the reconstructions, the ancient Khorezmians were light-eyed and fair-haired, if dark-complexioned.

North of the fortress stood the Lower Palace, a country residence with a large park.

In the fifth century the crafts here decline sharply, the city empties and becomes a vast necropolis of ossuary burials. Two causes are proposed: political — a new dynasty moved the capital to where the town of Beruni now stands — and natural, the Amu Darya changing course once more and leaving the irrigation canals dry.

Excavation produced a vivid picture of a developed culture: woollen and silk textiles, fine ceramics, coins, ornaments of gold and worked glass, and objects of amber, shell and even coral. Workshops inside the city made the famous Khorezmian bows.

Toprak-Kala is a characteristic monument of late-antique Khorezm, with its contradictory mix of developed urban life and firm clan tradition, and one of the few sites in Uzbekistan's Khorezm to have been fully excavated.