Urban Cultures Of Central Asia From The Bronze Age To The Karakhanids

For the first time a comprehensive presentation of the development of urban cultures in Central Asia from the Early Bronze Age (around 3000 BC) to the Middle Ages (about 1200 AD) is exemplarily illuminated in this book on the basis of individual research projects. The treated area extends from Turkmenistan to Mongolia and was home to cultures such as the Bronze Age Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex (BMAC), the Sogdian of the Iron Age, the early Parthian or various early medieval ones, namely in the Zhetysu (?Seven Stream country?) in the southeast of Kazakhstan. The urban civilizations that developed here were closely interrelated, on the one hand, with the cultures of the nomadic ranchers who traversed and inhabited this vast region and, on the other hand, with the more developed neighboring civilizations of the Near East and the Far East. Thus, the region became a diverse exchange zone of cultural and religious influences and also played a major role in the transmission of cultural impulses.0The richly illustrated book reflects the contributions of a conference that took place in Bern in 2016 and includes 28 contributions from 50 researchers from 14 countries. The results of many of the excavations presented here will be published in English for the first time. Each article is accompanied by an extensive bibliography and a Russian abstract.

The Bronze Age Civilization of Central Asia edited by Philip L. Kohl collates translated articles from soviet findings of Bronze Age and Aenolithic remains in Central Asia. Originally published in 1981, these articles include the latest discoveries at the time of publication such as the Murghab Delta sites to build a clearer picture of civilizations and settlements in Bronze Age Southern Central Asia and their history and evolution for new English audiences. This title will be of interest to students of history, archaeology and anthropology.

In 1988–89, Fred Hiebert excavated part of Gonur in collaboration with the Ministry of Culture of Turkmenistan and the Institute of Archaeology in Moscow. Published here, the results provide a key to understanding the large corpus of material of the Bactro-Margiana Archaeological Complex extracted over the past 30 years.

The BuddhistRoad project has been creating a new framework to understand the dynamics of cultural encounter and religious transfer across premodern Eastern Central Asia. This framework includes a new focus on the complex interactions between Buddhism and non-Buddhist traditions and a deepening of the traditional focus on Buddhist doctrines between the 6th and 14th centuries, as Buddhism continued to spread along an ancient, local political-economic-cultural system of exchange, often referred to as the Silk Roads. This volume brings together world renowned experts to discuss these issues including Buddhism and Christianity, Islam, Daoism, Manichaeism, local indigenous traditions, Tantra etc. Contributors include: Daniel Berounský, Michal Biran, Max Deeg, Lewis Doney, Mélodie Doumy, Meghan Howard Masang, Yukiyo Kasai, Diego Loukota†, Carmen Meinert, Sam van Schaik, Henrik H. Sørensen, and Jens Wilkens.

Qarakhanid Roads to China reconsiders the diplomacy, trade and geography of transcontinental networks between Central Asia and China from the 10th to the 12th centuries and challenges the concept of “the Silk Road crisis” in the period between the fall of the Tang Dynasty and the rise of the Mongols. Utilizing a broad range of Islamic and Chinese primary sources together with archaeological data, Dilnoza Duturaeva demonstrates the complexity of interaction along the Silk Roads and beyond that, revolutionizes our understanding of the Qarakhanid world and Song-era China’s relations with neighboring regions.