This monograph is a fundamental work summarizing the results of the work of the author, an employee of the Khorezm archaeological and ethnographic expedition of the Russian Academy of Sciences, on the ruins of urban and rural settlements of the Southern Aral Sea region in 1952-1990. Using a systematic approach to research involving a variety of sources - archaeological, ethnographic, written, numismatic - the author comprehensively, as far as it turned out to be possible, considers a specific society at a turning point in its history, when a new, medieval civilization comes to replace the ancient civilization.