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Mixing metaphors: sedentary-mobile interactions and local-global connections in prehistoric Turkmenistan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 June 2018

Lynne M. Rouse Open the ORCID record for Lynne M. Rouse [Opens in a new window]  and
Barbara Cerasetti
Lynne M. Rouse*
Affiliation:
Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, Eurasien-Abteilung, Im Dol 2-6, Haus 2, 14195 Berlin, Germany Washington University in St Louis, Department of Anthropology, One Brookings Drive, St Louis, Missouri 63130, USA
Barbara Cerasetti
Affiliation:
University of Bologna, Department of History, Culture and Civilizations, Piazza S. Giovanni in Monte, 2, 40124 Bologna, Italy
*
*Author for correspondence (Email: [email protected])
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Abstract

The deeply engrained stereotype of opposing ‘steppe’ and ‘sown’ societies has strongly influenced interpretation of Bronze Age Central Asia. This has led to the idea that the agricultural Oxus civilisation and non-Oxus mobile pastoralists formed two distinct cultural-economic groups in this region that are easily distinguishable through archaeological remains. Recent excavations of campsites in southern Turkmenistan, however, provide new evidence of variability in exchange between sites, suggesting adaptation by pastoralist groups in their interactions with settled Oxus farming groups. Rather than wholly reiterating or dissolving the distinctions between them, such practices dynamically reshaped the boundaries of these social and economic groups. These findings challenge us to move away from notions of centre-periphery, dependency and diffusion in discussions of intercultural contact in Eurasian prehistory.

Keywords

Central AsiaBronze AgeMurghab alluvial fanmobile pastoralismnomadic-sedentary interaction
Type
Research
Information
Antiquity , Volume 92 , Issue 363 , June 2018 , pp. 674 - 689
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd, 2018 

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