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This collection of essays presents a synthesis of current research on the Oxus Civilization, which rose and developed at the turn of the 3rd to 2nd millennia BC in Central Asia.
List of contents
Introduction PART I: THE OXUS CIVILIZATION BACKGROUND 1. Questioning the Oxus Civilization or Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Culture (BMAC): an Overview 2 The Oxus Civilization and Mesopotamia: A Philologist’s Point of View 3. Environmental Changes in Bactria and Sogdiana (Central Asia, Afghanistan, and Uzbekistan) from the Neolithic to the Late Bronze Age: Interaction with Human Occupation 4. The Rise of the Early Urban Civilization in Southwestern Central Asia (from the Middle Chalcolithic to the Middle Bronze Age in Southern Turkmenistan) PART II: THE "CORE AREA" 5. The Architecture of the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Culture 6. Some Thoughts on the Imaginary Representations in the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Culture 7. Myths and Gods in the Oxus Civilization 8. BMAC Glyptics: Typology, Context, Function, and Background 9. Chlorite Containers from the Oxus Civilization: Between Technical Choices and Iconographic Codes 10. The "Royal Necropolis" at Gonur Depe: an Attempt at Systematization (Plan, Constructions, Rituals) 11. Polychrome Inlayed and Painted Mosaics from Gonur Depe (Turkmenistan) 12. Animal Burials at Gonur Depe 13. Funerary Rituals and Archaeothanatological Data from BMAC Graves at Ulug-Depe (Turkmenistan) and Dzharkutan (Uzbekistan) 14. Bioarchaeology of the BMAC Population: A Short Review 15. Animal Exploitation at Gonur Depe 16. Life in the Countryside: the Rural Archaeology of the Sapalli Culture 17. Who Interacted with Whom? Re-Defining the Interaction between BMAC People and Mobile Pastoralists in Bronze Age Southern Turkmenistan 18. The End of the Oxus Civilization PART III: THE "SURROUNDING AREAS" 19. The BMAC Presence in Eastern Iran: State of Affairs in December 2018. --Towards the Greater Khorasan Civilization? 20. The Relationship between the Oxus Civilization and the Indo-Iranian Borderlands 21. Interaction between the Worlds of South Asia and Central Asia 22. The Oxus Civilization/BMAC and its Interaction with the Arabian Gulf: A Review of the Evidence 23. The Formation of the Oxus Civilization/BMAC in Southwestern Tajikistan 24. The Zeravshan Regional Variant of the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex: Interaction between Two Cultural Worlds 25. The "Classical Vakhsh Culture": a Bronze Age Culture of the 3rd and early 2nd Millennium BC in Southern Tajikistan 26. The Oxus Civilization and the Northern Steppes PART IV: METALS AND METAL DEPOSITS 27. Archaeometallurgical Studies on BMAC Artifacts 28. Metal Sources (Tin and Copper) and the BMAC 29. The Acquisition of Tin in Bronze Age Southwest Asia APPENDIX: Radiocarbon Dates Related to the BMAC/Oxus Civilization
About the author
Bertille Lyonnet is Directrice de Recherches Emeritus at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), Paris, as an archaeologist. She has worked in Central Asia (Afghanistan, Tadjikistan, and Uzbekistan), northeastern Syria, the northern Caucasus, and Azerbaijan. A specialist in ceramics, she has always shown a particular interest in the interrelations between the different areas of the world where she has worked. She is the author of several books and over 150 articles.
Nadezhda A. Dubova is a main researcher and head of the Center of Human Ecology at the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology (IEA) of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia. She was the head and/or a member of more than 60 physical anthropological and archaeological expeditions in Russia, Central Asia, Iran, and the Moldova Republic. She now heads the International Russian-Turkmen Margiana archaeological expedition. She gives lectures at different universities (Lomonosov Moscow, Ufa (Bashkortostan), Voronezh, South Kazakhstan (Shimkent), and Bern (Switzerland)). She is the author and editor of more than 400 publications on physical anthropology, human ecology, Eurasian archaeology, and theoretic problems of anthropology.
Summary
This collection of essays presents a synthesis of current research on the Oxus Civilization, which rose and developed at the turn of the 3rd to 2nd millennia BC in Central Asia.
Additional text
"The World of the Oxus Civilisation brings to life one of the great ‘lost civilisations’ of the ancient world, lost only because, while extraordinarily rich and extensive in its reach, its story has long been hidden from the broader world of scholarship by extreme political and linguistic barriers. This volume, telling the full story of the Oxus Civilisation for the first time, is a magnificent gift for anyone interested in the rich complexity of the ancient world and the early rise of internationalism across Asia. Its comprehensive coverage, presented as a series of specialist essays by a range of international scholars, will be warmly welcomed as a much needed authoritative work of reference filling a critical gap in the early history of Old World development." - Alison Betts, University of Sydney, Australia.
"This ambitious book provides a comprehensive overview by many experts of the remarkable Bronze Age Civilization of the Oxus including detailed description of the settlement systems, the archaeological evidence for a complex and unique culture as well as discussions of relations with neighboring civilizations in Iran, the Indus Valley and Mesopotamia. The astounding richness of the burials at the site of Gonur are testimony to the wealth and sophistication of this culture which flourished as part of the expansive network of trade and exchange that linked the riverine cultures of the Near East from Troy to the Indus valley." - Holly Pittman, University of Pennsylvania, USA.
