Overview

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. First discovered in the 1970s, the Oxus Civilization, or the Bactria–Margiana Archaeological Complex (BMAC), has engendered many different interpretations, which are explored in this volume by an international group of archaeologists and researchers. Contributors cover all aspects of this fascinating Bronze Age culture: architecture; material culture; grave goods; religion; migrations; and trade and interactions with neighboring civilizations, from Mesopotamia to the Indus, and the Gulf to the northern steppes. Chapters also examine the Oxus Civilization’s roots in previous local cultures, explore its environmental and chronological context, or the possibly coveted metal sources, and look into the reasons for its decline. The World of the Oxus Civilization offers a broad and fascinating examination of this society, and provides an invaluable updated resource for anyone working on the culture, history, and archaeology of this region and on the multiple interactions at work at that time in the ancient Near East.

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9781032570037

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Reviews

"""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."

Author Information

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.

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