The Bronze Age of Central Asia is celebrated for major cultural and technological changes that laid the foundations for a social and material web that linked ancient societies across Eurasia. Encompassing a large portion of the Eurasian landmass, Central Asia stretches from the vast Russian and Kazakh steppes and mountain foothills, southward to the intersecting mountain, foothill, and desert regions of northern Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Turkmenistan. Across this ecological mosaic, various herding, farming, and foraging societies took shape during Bronze Age (3rd-2nd Millennium BC).
The archaeological records of northern and southern Central Asia are quite different, their chronological phases are outlined individually in the text. Northern Central Asia figures prominently in studies on the spread and development of regional pastoralism. Conventionally understood as a “pastoral realm,” small villages and seasonal campsites, stone-lined burials, and rock art have been principal areas of research investigations there for over a century. By contrast, southern Central Asia is home to large fortified centers, smaller sedentary villages, and pastoral campsites, making it a key zone for charting mobile and sedentary interactions through time. These two contrasting, yet intersecting, prehistories were integral to multiregional exchange, culture contact, and technology transfer, which irreversibly altered the social trajectories of societies from Europe to China in prehistory.
Archaeologically documented Bronze Age settlements in Central Asia are sparsely distributed over a massive landscape. Structures show considerable regional diversity in terms of their architectural characteristics and internal layout, which range from small villages with wooden, stone, or mudbrick structures to architecturally ephemeral campsites (Kuz’mina 2007: Figs. 8, 9; Mar’yashev and Gumirova 2011). The Middle Bronze Age fortified centers of the Bactria Margiana Archaeological Complex of southern Central Asia (Sarianidi 2007) and the nucleated, fortified settlements of the Sintashta complex located in the southern Urals in Russia (Gening et al. 1992) comprise the two exceptions to the major architectural characteristics of the region’s built environment.
Despite its geographically dispersed archaeological landscape, multiregional interaction is a defining feature of Central Asian Bronze Age. Dynamic transregional connections and exchange in the region is shown most clearly through its 2nd millennium BC metallurgical inventory, horse riding and chariot technology, and geographic transport of crops between China and Southwest Asia (Sherratt 2006). Archeological discoveries made over the past ten years, however, demonstrate that a regional web of interaction and technology transfer was in place earlier on, during 3rd Millennium BC (Jones et al. 2011; Frachetti 2012; Spengler et al. 2014). These discoveries are the result of a growing number of archaeometric dates, settlement excavations with multiperiod stratified cultural deposits, site survey and mapping, and scientific studies of diet and exchange. This paper will outline recent findings on the emergence and nature of Eurasian pastoralism, the pastoral/agricultural and mobile/sedentary dichotomy, and local material traditions and exchange as viewed through the lens of multimaterials analyses.
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