Ethnographic Surkhan

Ancient ancestors of the Surkhan people developed peculiar ways of their life getting adapted to the geographical-territorial and natural conditions of the Oasis. Natural conditions and socio-economic development formed peculiar features in the national feelings, way of life, and culture of the population. Based on these peculiarities the economic activity , material culture, menthality, customs and traditions were developed. They are vividly reflected in the archaeological and ethnographic research works of our scientists. All scientific-research works witness of the unique and rich past history of the Surkhan people. Because the people living in this region differ from other inhabitants of Uzbekistan with their peculiar ways of life, traditions of house-holding, town-building, culture of cloth, customs and its special oral folk work. And for this reason the Surkhan Oasis is defined as a special ethnographic area in Uzbekistan. Studying the Surkhan region from the view point of ethnography had started from the second half of the XIX c by Russian and British travellers, military officers, orientalists and voluntary ethno graphs who left their observations in research works and memoirs. B.H.Karmisheva did great contributions in studying the life way of the Surkhan people from ethnographical view point. But I should note that the Independence of Uzbekistan has opened more favorable conditions and opportunities in studying the ethnography of our region in a proper way. A lot of scientific-research works were carried out in observing the ethno-cultural process as well as studying the material and spiritual culture of the people of this oasis. Nowadays such kinds of research works are fulfilled not only by our experts but a wide auditorium of foreign scientists has been doing rather large scale scientific-researches in this field. In 2001 the UNESCO included Boysun as the 12th area giving a title of “Masterpiece of oral and intangible heritage of humanity” noting that only 19 areas in the world had been given a chance to be included in this list.