1.  Mobility, Monumentality and  Ritual in the Bronze Age of Khanuy Valley, Central Mongolia

 

Francis Allard (Indiana University of Pennsylvania)

 

Established in 2001, the Khanuy Valley Project on Early Nomadic Pastoralism in Mongolia focuses on the circumstances surrounding the emergence and early development of mobile herding in that region. This talk reviews the results of the project’s varied field activities in Khanuy valley, which to date have included excavations, surface and subsurface surveys, paleoenvironmental work, as well as an ethnographic study. Together, these approaches have contributed to a more balanced view of those Bronze Age populations that first constructed and used the valley’s many large stone built ritual sites known as khirigsuurs. The emerging picture in Khanuy valley points to khirigsuurs that served not as centers of polities, but rather as landmarks to anchor mobile populations to certain sectors of the landscape, while also providing a setting for seasonal rituals that involved animal sacrifice and celestial bodies. Significantly, certain features of these animal-focused rituals display continuity with present-day practices, as does the location of temporary campsites. The talk also reviews the paleoenvironmental studies being conducted and their potential to frame cultural processes, including the emergence and development of the khirigsuur phenomenon from the middle of the second to the middle of the first millennium B.C.

 

 

  1.  Redefining the Ahar-Banas and its Contacts with Central Asia and the Indus: Recent Finds from Gilund, Rajastan, India

 

Marta Ameri (New York University)

 

The discovery of seal impressions at the Ahar-Banas site of Gilund in the winter 2002-2003 excavation season came as a surprise to many who had typically considered this area of western India a backwater. It placed the site squarely within an administrative tradition that existed throughout Asia as early as the 5th millennium B.C. The use of seals as tools in an advanced administrative system is well know from sites in Mesopotamia, Turkey and Iran as early as the 5th millennium. During the 3rd millennium, square stamp seals with short inscriptions are one of the most typical artifacts of the Mature Harappan civilization.

 

What is unusual about the impressions from Gilund, however, is that rather than imitating the square seals of the Indus Valley, they strongly resemble material found at Bactria Margiana Archaeological Complex (BMAC) sites of Central Asia and generally associated with these oasis cultures. This raises important questions as to the nature of the external contacts of the inhabitants of Gilund. Most importantly, the discovery of these seal impressions seems to call for a reexamination, and possibly a redefinition of the Ahar-Banas Culture and its relationship with the world beyond its borders. This paper will attempt to place this material within the larger context of both its administrative function and its iconographical origins.

 

3.      Free at last—the Herding-and-Gathering Srubnaya Economy at Krasno

      Samarskoe, Russia, and the End of the Parasitic Model of Steppe           Pastoralism

 

David Anthony (Hartwick College)

 

The Srubnaya settlement at Krasnosamarskoe was occupied through all seasons of the year—plants and animals were harvested in both cold and warm seasons. The tight clustering of radiocarbon dates at KS (about 1750 calBC) suggests a short occupation. The PD herding camps showed that herds of cattle and sheep were moved seasonally into pastures usually just 4-6 km from the probable homestead location. But surprisingly for such a localized and permanently-based herding system we found no evidence for the presence of cultivated cereals at KS. Its occupants instead collected starchy seeds of native wild plants including Amaranthus and Chenopodium; also carrots, chicory, and garlic. Their teeth were examined for caries and compared with the teeth of all of the other excavated Srubnaya individuals stored in the IHAV museum in Samara (1732 teeth from 88 adults). The extremely low frequency of caries, comparable to that of foragers, confirmed that, as a regional population, they ate little or no cultivated grain. The notion that Eurasian steppe pastoral economies either were agro-pastoral or depended parasitically on agricultural societies is wrong. The Samara Valley Project has shown that many LBA Srubnaya people, at least in the middle Volga region, practiced no agriculture and ate little or no bread. The KS Srubnaya culture practiced a herding-and-gathering economy based on permanent, year-round settlements, a novel kind of subsistence that has not been documented previously in the Eurasian steppes.

 

 

4.      From Extended Families to Incipient Polities: The Growth of Social

      Complexity in the Early Bronze Age of the Plain of Ararat

 

Gregory E. Areshian (University of California at Los Angeles)

 

Interdependent trends in demographic development, economic organization, and systems of beliefs have stipulated the dynamics of social complexity since the earliest periods documented in archaeological data. The Kura-Araxes/Early Transcaucasian civilization of the Early Bronze Age, which represents the single most widely spread cultural phenomenon in the Ancient Near East of the first half of the 3rd millennium BC, displays an internal evolution of social complexity within the geographic limits of its core, particularly in the Plain of Ararat in Armenia. The excavations carried out in that region reveal the process of development of a tri-level structure of Early Bronze Age agricultural-pastoral settlements correlated with the emergence of several elements of early urbanism (monumental cultic buildings, fortifications, craft specialization, incipient markets, organization of communal labor, etc.). The data allow for a reconstruction of incipient polities dominated by military aristocracy. Found in most of the geographic zones of the drainage of the Araxes River, these polities have continuously interacted with nomadic population that have occupied areas which were marginal from agriculturalists’ perspective. The collapse of the Kura-Araxes civilization ca 2400-2200 BC brought to an end the trends in social complexity, which were developing within the framework of socio-cultural traditions of that civilization. It was followed by new types of networks in social relations established during the first half of the Middle Bronze Age.

 

 

5.      The Developmental Stages of the Tagar Culture in the South Siberia  

 

Nikolay Anatolievich Bokovenko (Institute of Archaeology - St. Petersburg, Russia)

 

 

  1. Social Order of Hsiung-nu society (Asian Huns)

 

Ursula Brosseder (The Alexander von Humboldt Foundation at the Russian Academy of Science, Siberian Branch, Novosibirsk)

 

The research of Hsiung-nu society is dominated by the picture presented in the Chinese written sources. Only in the last years archaeological research of Hsiung-nu society made significant progress, especially at the Northern border of the “nomadic” Hsiung-nu Empire. The lecture will show on the basis of the cemetery of Ivolga located in the Southern Baikal area the social order of this community. As one of the few published grave-yards with adjacent settlement this monument offers the opportunity to study different social groups/families in a diachronic perspective. Key tool for the understanding of this social landscape is the analysis of the very different pottery traditions which embraces on the one hand local pottery traditions of Southern Baikal area which have been neglected in past researches and on the other hand the impact of Chinese manufacturing traditions. Other imported goods show not only the close contact to the Chinese Han Empire in the South but also with the Minusinsk Basin in the West.

 

 

 

 

 

  1. Integrating Fragmentation Practices into Landscape Archaeology

 

Plenary Lecture

 

John Chapman (University of Durham)

 

Fragmentation is not only a characteristic of modernism – the alienating experience of Cubism, dissolving relationships and irreconcilable personality traits. Fragmentation practices have been a characteristic of prehistoric societies at least since the Upper Palaeolithic, as seen in the broken Gravettian figurines from Dolni Vestonice. What is new is the recognition of deliberate object fragmentation – the continuing biography of fragments of an object well after it was broken – in many times/places in prehistory and history. I propose that deliberate fragmentation can most convincingly be explained by the anthropological concept of “enchainment”, as developed in Melanesian societies by Annette Weiner and Marilyn Strathern. Here, in prehistory, we have a special case of enchainment, namely “fragment enchainment” – the creation, maintenance and expansion of social relations through the use of broken objects.

 

I shall summarize some new studies that demonstrate the existence of re-fitting fragments at both inter- and intra-site levels, involving the use of decorated stones, pottery and figurines, at sites ranging from Brittany to Moldova. This demonstration of the spatial scale of fragment enchainment leads to the question of how best to integrate the results of fragmentation analysis into wider landscape concerns. One way is to relate social networks of enchainment to the nested hierarchy of concepts of place-identity as developed by the geographer Rob Shields, as a material culture-based means of differentiating places in the landscape. A related approach seeks to differentiate members of enchainment networks from others by developing concepts of insiders and outsiders. The ultimate goal of these approaches is the achievement of a more grounded integration of the three fundamental elements in cultural identity - people, places and things.

 

 

  1. The Ancient Oasis Landscape of Chorasmia: A New Interpretation of a Local Central Asian Settlement Pattern

 

 

Michelle Negus Cleary (University of Sydney)

 

The ancient land of Chorasmia was an agricultural oasis surrounded by nomadic communities and largely isolated from other settled peoples. Many features of the mid to late 1st millennium B.C.E. Chorasmian oasis landscape have been well preserved, such as fields, irrigation systems, huge fortified enclosures, and monumental cultic structures. Past scholars have interpreted the fortified enclosures as urban centres, despite the fact that most of these sites lack key urban features, such as residential areas and streets. A different interpretation of these sites can be argued by widening the focus to explore the relationships between various other preserved architectural remains and features, looking at the oasis as an entire landscape. This paper embarks on such an alternative interpretation by looking at the built landscape around the Chorasmian sites of Ayaz-kala, Bol’shoi Kyrk-kyz-kala and Kurgashin-kala, drawing from the archaeological investigations of previous scholars, as well as the author’s field surveys. From this study another picture is emerging of how these ancient Central Asians may have inhabited their oasis and occupied their sites in a non-nucleated arrangement, that was perhaps influenced by previous oasis societies, local geographic conditions, and the close ties between the Chorasmians and the nomadic pastoralist world, to form a unique, Central Asian oasis settlement pattern.

 

 

9.      Utopian City-State or Hierarchical Bronze Age Hegemony?  Domestic Architecture and Social Order at Mohenjo Daro, Pakistan

Ed Cork (University of Durham)

This paper seeks to reassess the current understanding of the social order at Mohenjo Daro, a major city of the Indus Civilization (Pakistan and northwest India c.2600-1900BC), in the light of domestic architecture.  Much previous research has been concerned with the nature of the political and social organization of Indus cities, but has largely neglected investigating the ways in which this organization affected the inhabitants, and how it was reaffirmed and distorted by them in material culture.  Predicated on the assumption that the spatial arrangement, size and design of houses embody societal values and norms, the domestic architecture of Mohenjo Daro is discussed, and contrasted with architecture from various cities in Mesopotamia.  In particular, the location within the house of various elements such as courtyards, religious areas and water features are highlighted as providing a means of understanding themes such as individual notions of privacy, physical and social segregation and attitudes towards the public display of wealth.  This approach contributes towards a more subtle understanding of the ways in which the members of households at Mohenjo Daro interacted with each other and their neighbors; stressing the uniquely local character of the Indus social order, whilst acknowledging its setting within wider Eurasian social systems.

 

10.  Gendered Identity and the ‘Warrior’ Ethos within Early Iron Age Steppe Societies

Bryan Hanks (University of Pittsburgh) and Ekaterina Efimova (University of Pittsburgh)

 

In recent years, interpretative approaches to the archaeology of the past have sought to raise the analytical acuity regarding the materiality and historical contingency of the human body.  Through examining the nuances associated with socially constituted ritual practice, and the utilization of the body as material agent for the articulation of social identity and gender, a significant degree of complexity emerges relating to the cultural practices which constituted the individual and their life experiences.  This paper will examine these issues in light of the changing social practices associated with the widespread warrior ethos among Eurasian steppe societies in the Early Iron Age. A specific focus will be placed on evaluating the lines of material evidence from mortuary contexts that indicate changing patterns of gender identity, the construction of the warrior aesthetic through the art and symbolism of conflict and warfare, and the role of social memory in the ritualized treatment and placement of the dead within the landscape.  It will be argued that such new theoretical approaches are needed in order to extend beyond conventional interpretations of Eurasian Iron Age societies as static reflections of hierarchical social organization.

 

 

  1. Prehistoric Salt Exploitation in Central Anatolia

 

Burcin Erdogu (University of Thrace-Edirne, Turkey)

 

Salt is an essential dietary item for both humans and animals. Although salt has been used from prehistoric times for flavouring, pickling, preserving and curing meat and fish and for tanning, it has also used in culturally significant or emotionally charged situations, for example, religious ritual, parturition or mortuary activity, and a variety of ceremonies involving food. A large lake of Tuz Gölü is an important source of salt in Central Anatolia. The water has a high salt content, up to 33% saline, which evaporates in summer to form salt crusts some 30 cm in thickness. In Central Anatolia, the potential significance of prehistoric salt exploitation and trade has been mentioned in passing since the 1950s but there has been no collective strategy for an investigation of the use of such important sources as Tuz Gölü. The Central Anatolian salt project was initiated recently with the aim of defining the use of salt, the date, intensity and significance of salt trade in Anatolian prehistory through a pilot investigation of Tuz Gölü and neighboring archaeological sites. This paper will present the Central Anatolian Salt Project (CASP) and some preliminary results.

 

12.  Method and Theory in the Variation of Bronze Age Eurasian Landscapes: From the whole to its parts and back again

Michael D. Frachetti (University of Pennsylvania)

 

The archaeological approach to the Bronze Age archaeology of the Eurasian steppe has typically been one of cultural wholes, defined by the “overlaps” or similarities between potentially disarticulated parts.  The phenomenon of the “Andronovo” Cultural Community may be a prime example of this regional-block culture approach.  Recent studies by the author in the Dzhungar Mountains of eastern Kazakhstan have illustrated that local assemblages, which may appear as a derivative mixture of regionally definable material forms, are perhaps better conceived as the result of repeated deviations from regular channels of interaction, so that the very aspect of “variation” in the way of life of steppe pastoralists, was the generative force in diversifying the character of their local package of material culture. Thus, theories that seek to tie cultural geographies to styles of materials, and to argue for links between those geographies on the basis of material transposition, may be overlooking the practical way that material forms are exchanged and distributed, especially given the nature of pastoral adaptation in much of the steppe zone. This paper presents the methodological approach to this aspect of variation, as well as a theoretical model applied to the example of the Dzhungar Mountains to propose how repetitive variations in localized adaptations may have contributed to the distribution of material culture that characterizes the steppe Bronze Age more broadly. 

 

 

  1. The World of the Living and the World of the Dead: Opposition or Integration

 

Bisserka Gaydarska (University of Durham)

 

One of the most intriguing characteristics of Balkan prehistory is the spatial coexistence of tell settlements and burial mounds. At present, they are believed to present different social groups, respectively of sedentary farmers and nomadic stock-breeders and in addition, they are chronologically differentiated. This paper questions the reflectionist approach to these monuments and aims to identify their underlying social dynamics by putting them into a wider landscape context.

 

The study area covers 350 km2 of open-cast mining region in Southeast Bulgaria. It comprises more than 50 prehistoric sites, most of which are now destroyed by the mining. The devastated state of the local landscape imposed the use of GIS technology for both reconstruction of the now-gone physical environment and analyses of the patterns of dwelling in the landscape.

 

The tells and the barrows in the study area were spatially divided – the former along the Southern valley, the latter along the Northern valley. Was this a social division between people with different worldviews or rather a landscape discourse between competing domains of ancestral power? I would argue that, while possible, the first claim needs further support and would advance the second notion which links people and places in an ever-changing world.

 

  1. Early Transcaucasia’s Deep South: “Khirbet Kerak Folk” at Khirbet Kerak (Tel Bet Yerah)

 

Raphael Greenberg (Tel-Aviv University)

 

In line with current understandings of migration and the creation of cultural boundaries, the descent of ETC into the Levantine valleys and its transformation into Red-Black Burnished/Khirbet Kerak Ware should be understood as the result of strategic decisions on the part of social actors. While a combination of “push” and “pull” factors brought new people to specific places in the Levant, the choices made by these newcomers represent an intentional response to changed circumstances. These choices are visible archaeologically in the pattern of settlement, both in the landscape and on specific sites, and in technological and symbolic qualities of the pottery. The latter are most clearly expressed in the patterned interplay of function, typology, and color in the Khirbet Kerak Ware from the type-site.

 

 

  1. Tempered Progress: The Politics of Social Production - A Study of Sherd Microscopy from the Late Bronze Age Tsakahovit Plain, Armenia

Alan Greene (University of Chicago)

Microscopic analysis of ceramic production technologies can reveal the active reordering of social life by newly empowered elites.  Ongoing investigations on Armenia’s Tsakahovit Plain seek to outline the local emergence of sociopolitical complexity in the Late Bronze Age.  Current models of this early polity, strengthened by the apparent asymmetric movement of ceramic vessels across the Tsakahovit Plain, suggest a highly integrated political entity.  This study presents the microscopic analysis of these vessels as a means to map branching routes of technical activity that reflect access points for models of sociopolitical order.  When taken as the result of successive technical operations, ceramic vessels from Tsakahovit may be analyzed as members of distinct, culturally situated traditions of production.  The loci at which operational pathways diverge are modeled as the boundaries of useful analytical groupings of ancient production strategies.  The compositional groups suggested through Instrumental Neutron Activation should not be taken to represent centers of production, workshops, clay sources, or productive traditions without the comparative aid of microscopic analysis.  The results of this research demonstrate the existence of multiple technologies of vessel production that must be explained in the context of the neutron activation data and the orientation of political organization.

 

16.  Middle to Late Bronze Age Socio-Economic Dynamics in the Southern Urals, Russia

Bryan Hanks (University of Pittsburgh), Andrei Epimakov (South Ural State University, Russia) & Colin Renfrew (University of Cambridge)

 

Archaeological remains dating from the Middle to Late Bronze Age (22nd to 18th c. cal BC) in the southern Urals region of Russia reflect dynamic social, economic and technological developments relating to the appearance of Sintashta-Petrovka settlements and cemeteries.  However, even though extensive material evidence supports the view that a significant level of cultural complexity dominated this geographical zone, numerous problematical questions remain regarding basic settlement functioning, socio-economic patterns, and the interpretation of complex ritual and mortuary practices for these societies.  This paper will present an overview of these problems and evaluate the significance of the southern Urals Bronze Age within larger socio-cultural trajectories of change associated with the eastern steppe zone (i.e. Srubnaya and Andronovo patterns). These issues will be discussed in light of the recent unpublished results of a large scale radiometric dating project for the region and preliminary results of collaborative archaeological fieldwork carried out in the southern Urals at the Kamennyi Ambar fortified settlement and cemetery complex.  

 

 

  1. Ceramics from Yanshi Shang City: A Preliminary Technography

 

Charles W. Hartley (University of Chicago)

 

This preliminary study seeks to elucidate factors or conditions in the social order present in early Bronze Age China (ca. 1600 BCE) through analysis of techniques used in the manufacture of ceramics from the Yanshi Shang City site in northern Henan Province, PRC. This research is more than an attempt to merely describe the process of manufacture for pottery in the Zhongyuan region, but also attempts to more intricately connect the study of techniques with questions on various social and material dimensions of interest during this period.

 

The study itself is carried out using four interrelated typologies representing different stages of the manufacturing process: paste preparation, vessel formation, surface treatment, and firing procedure. This decidedly qualitative approach is used as a method toward orienting and conceptualizing the different ways possible for understanding the ceramic manufacture process as a continuum of knowledge and techniques.

 

 

  1. Surveying the ‘Invisible Culture’: Methodological considerations for settlement archaeology in Mongolia

 

Jean-Luc Houle (University of Pittsburgh)

 

Much attention has recently been given to the numerous Bronze-Age ritual/funerary sites that dot Mongolia’s landscape in order to suggest the early practice of nomadic pastoralism in that region. Unfortunately, little attention has been given to pastoral settlements. Although there is an increasing interest in settlement archaeology in Inner Asia, methodological issues still remain problematic. Primarily, we have yet to properly conceptualize what we mean by nomadic pastoralist settlements. Recent work in Central Mongolia has shown the potential for ethnoarchaeological and stratified archaeological survey as a useful approach to settlement archaeology for this region. This paper reintroduces the benefits of ethnoarchaeological approaches for conceptualizing spatial organization of ancient pastoral settlement systems. Preliminary results from a high resolution survey in the Khanuy Valley, which included test excavations, has corroborated ethnoarchaeological information concerning settlement systems. Together, these two approaches would allow for the devising of an informed or “value-added” regional survey.

 

 

  1. Unforgettable Landscapes: Attachments to the Past in Hellenistic Armenia

 

Lori Khatchadourian (University of Michigan)

 

This paper explores the archaeology of social memory on the Armenian highlands, and particularly the Ararat plain, in the last three centuries BC. The “Hellenistic” period ushered in new opportunities for contact and exchange in the eastern Mediterranean and the Near East. For the communities living on the Ararat plain, as palpable as these new possibilities for interaction were, so too were the opportunities and pressures of the past. These communities inhabited a landscape replete with monuments that spoke to the triumphs and failures of past regimes. In various ways, the dynastic rulers and subjects of Hellenistic Armenia commemorated the Urartian and Achaemenid past.

 

The social memories to be discussed here are made visible through text, place, and ritual behavior. The texts are a series of stelae made during the reign of Artaxias I (189-160 BC). The second part of the paper will look at settlements, and the different ways in which two political centers, Armavir and Artashat, interacted with preexisting Urartian fortresses. Part three turns to funerary practices, which suggest that the subjects of Hellenistic Armenia engaged in a deliberate discourse with the lived spaces of the past. Across social boundaries, the commemorative acts of elites and non-elites converged around a common attachment to the unforgettable landscapes of Urartu.

 

 

  1. Dynamics of Anthropogenic Threats in Natural Landscape and Cultural Heritage of Sarmishsai Valley: new approaches and measures for their conservation

 

 

Muhiddin M. Khujanazarov (Institute of Archaeology, Academy of Sciences Uzbekistan), Alisher M. Khujanazarov (University of Warsaw) & Marina Reutova

The cultural and natural heritage of Sarmishsai petroglyphs site has been predefined by its geographical location at one of the crossroads of the Central Asian ancient communications stretched along the Silk Road. The rock art gallery of more than 4500 constitutes the most important part of the archaeological landscape of Sarmishsai. Their location is determined by certain natural conditions of the landscape, and also by the cultural and functional contents of its particular elements.  All other archaeological monuments, such as Uchtut Paleolithic site, graves, kurgans and settlements are well preserved and wonderfully harmonize with their natural environment as the remains of stone structures – dwellings, enclosures for pasturing cattle, burial fences and mounds. The present level of knowledge allows regarding the cultural archaeological landscape of Sarmishsai as a bright example of the development, within a limited area, of the traditional forms of husbandry, land use and social organization of the pastoral system in Central Asia. However due to many reasons, this bright phenomenon still remains poorly studied and little known to the world community. One of the difficult things to understand is the role of ancient carvings as a means of expression of social interconnections and of the interrelations between environments and human activities.

 

  1. Trade, Trade Routes and Cross-Cultural Communication in the Ferghana Valley during the Early Centuries CE

 

 

Fiona Kidd (University of Sydney)

 

The Silk Roads in their ever evolving form provided a significant nexus for pastoralist and agrarian societies for several millennia.  Not only commodities, but ideas, religions and genes were exchanged in international and localised forums of trade.  According to Han period sources, the role played by the Ferghana Valley in this east-west trade was a pivotal one.  They boast that by the beginning of the CE the region was already overflowing with Chinese goods.  Yet in reality the Ferghana Valley remains frustratingly enigmatic during this period.  For example, one of the major research issues of this region during the pre-Islamic period is the identity of people found in the numerous burial grounds that have been excavated across the Valley.  The society in which they lived remains little known, as does the religion they practised.  There remains debate over the exact route taken by the Silk Roads crossing the Valley, while the nature of the trading relations also remains nebulous.  The aim of this paper is to explore evidence regarding the interactions of sedentary and nomadic communities living in and around the Ferghana Valley during the pre-Islamic period in the broader context of trade. 

 

22.  Social Landscape of North-Central Eurasia and its Transformations during the Second Millennium BC

 

Opening Lecture

 

Ludmila Koryakova (Ural State University, Russia)

 

Yet thirty years ago the social level of  cultures situated on the 'barbarian periphery' of the classical civilizations in  North-Central Eurasia  was  defined as rather primitive,  and it evolved gradually but  in linear progression from a collective basis to feudal relations.  Nowadays we would suggest that social evolution in temperate Eurasia was realized in a multi-evolutional field. This territory 'knew' both great 'highs' and great 'lows',  'glory' and 'declines',  technological inventions and adoptions,
social consolidations and disintegrations. Steppe cultures of the Bronze Age are of key significance for understanding the long-term processes that occurred in the vast Eurasian space.   The paper will examine social strategies and review the trend of social complexity in North-Central Eurasia (Eastern Europe, Urals, and western Siberia) during the second millennium BC (Middle, Late and Final Bronze Age) in the light of modern theoretical concepts.

 

 

  1. The Social Stratification of the Hsiung-nu Nomadic Empire in Baikal Area

 

Nikolay N. Kradin (Far East Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences, Institute of History, Archaeology, and Ethnography)

 

The Hsiung-nu society was the first nomadic empire at the Inner Asia. It was tribal confederation in the internal relations, and was a conqueror "xenocratic" nomadic statehood society to the foreign nations and civilizations. The social structure of Hsiung-nu had many levels of hierarchy. I attempted to extend our ideas of the Hsiung-nu structure by way of the study of differences in the burial of nomads. For analysis, I have selected materials for four most extensively studied cemeteries in the Baikal area (426 burials). The richest burials were concentrated in the Ilmovaya pad' cemetery. Here, three ranks are identified in the burials of both men and women. The men's burials of Cheremukhovaya pad' are combined into several different groups which, possibly, reflect a nature of their activities during life-time. In the female (women's) burials of Cheremukhovaya pad', two groups were revealed. In Dyrestuisky Kultuk cemetery also three ranks are identified in the burials of both men and women. Four hierarchical ranks for men and five ones for women were identified in Ivolginsky cemetery. The certain differentiation of children burials into "rich" and "poor" ones can be traced (most pronounced differences were found for Ivolginsky cemetery were 3-4 groups were identified).

 

 

  1. Holocene Climate History of the Steppe and Forest-Steppe Belt of Eurasia  

 

Closing Lecture

 

Konstantin Kremenetski (Institute of Geography, Russian Academy of Sciences)

 

Global warming in early Holocene allowed an expansion of broad-leaved trees in East Europe. 10,000-8500 bc in the forest-steppe belt pine and birch dominated in forests, but there was a significant admixture of broad-leaved trees. Period 6300-4800 bc was characterised by warm climate. Time interval from 4800 to 2800 bc was a period of mild benign climate over most steppe belt of Eurasia. Human influence on the vegetation became evident according to pollen investigation of archaeological sites. There were numerous sharp climate oscillations between 3200 and 600 bc. Climate became more dry and continental after 3200 bc. The most continental phase of climate is dated between 2800 and 2000 bc. New phase of moist climate is dated 1700-900 bc. After 600 bc the vegetation cover became similar to the modern. Degradation of forests was caused by combined effect of climate deterioration and human impact. During two last millennia pollen indicators of human activities are recorded in pollen diagrams in south of Moldova, in forest-steppe belt in Ukraine. East from the Dniepr valley human impact on the vegetation cover became evident on pollen data only during last millennium.

 

  1. The Emergence of the Karasuk Culture: New Socioeconomic Foundations versus Cultural Continuity

 

Sophie Legrand (Institute of Archaeology, University of Paris)

 

 

  1. Cosmic Symbolism, Political Order, and the Production of Urban Landscape: A Study of Three Bronze Age Settlements in China

 

Hu Lin (University of Chicago)

 

This paper is dedicated to exploration of real political relations through discussion of urban symbolism. Following Smith (2003), I give up looking for general rules ordering macropolitical space, and instead suggest consider the relation between the shifting practical relation and changing landscape. I argue that archaeologists have to develop multiple lines of evidence to discuss political order, among which the discussion of urban symbolism is an important dimension. In a detailed case study of three walled settlements from early Bronze Age central China, I compare four aspects of urban symbolism: settlement location and site topography, wall shape and gates, transportation system, and administrative center. In the conclusion, I evaluate the implication of political order, while combining the evidence of cultural history and political economy.

 

 

  1. Constructing Political Order: Landscape and Legitimacy in South Caucasia during the Mid-Second Millennium B.C.

 

Ian C. Lindsay (University of California at Santa Barbara)

 

As the Middle Bronze Age (c. 2200-1500 B.C.) drew to a close in south Caucasia, the cultural landscape was segmented into archaeologically distinct but interrelated nomadic pastoral societies already ordered into rigid social hierarchies.  These burgeoning political orders crystallized into mature institutions during the Late Bronze Age (c. 1550-1150), as mobile herding societies began to settle communities around imposing new stone fortresses overlooking fertile agricultural plains and valleys.  The shift from nomadic herding to the restricted mobility of agro-pastoralism tethered to fortress systems signifies changes not just in subsistence and settlement practices, but involves transformations in a host of social and economic institutions deeply embedded in nomadic communities – all of which have profound implications for the negotiation of political authority.  Drawing on ceramic circulation data derived from recent excavations in the Tsaghkahovit Plain (northwest Armenia) and surrounding clay sources, this paper will discuss how authority may have been constituted in the new sociopolitical milieu.  Preliminary results of neutron activation analysis on ceramics from LBA fortress and settlement contexts suggest a surprising level of economic insularity that may offer insights into economic practice, strategies of authority, and the production of political landscapes during this dynamic period.

 

  1. The Gender of Luxury and Power among the Xiongnu in Eastern Eurasia

 

Katheryn M. Linduff (University of Pittsburgh)

 

The Gender of Luxury and Power Among the Xiongnu in Eastern Eurasia looks at the imported Chinese goods in the burials of women of these late 1st millennium BCE tribes to determine how gender played into the construction of political and economic power.

 

 

29.  Late Bronze Age Settlements:  A Study of Site Usage and Macrobotanical Remains in Russia

Madeleine McLeester (University of Chicago)

During summer 2004, a joint Russian-American team excavated a unique metal working settlement in the forest-steppe region of Samara, Russia (Middle Volga Region).  A goal of this research was to better understand how Late Bronze Age groups interacted with and were constrained by this particular type of environment.  The settlement site at Baitugan had good preservation of macrobotanical remains allowing us to illustrate how people utilized the local vegetation and arranged their living space during that time.  This paper will focus on the rich botanical data from this Late Bronze Age site, and also compare it to two other settlements in the region.

 

 

  1. Defining the Xiongnu Empire

 

Bryan K. Miller (University of Pennsylvania)

 

Studies of the Xiongnu have developed out of historical research, archaeological excavations and art historical interests, but dialogues between these disciplines are few.  Furthermore, research approaches are often geographically divisive and thus conflict rather than contribute to a cohesive understanding of the empire.  A collaborative and multi-disciplinary approach, incorporating material from northern China, Mongolia, and southern Siberia, pursued within a larger paradigm of steppe empires helps to contextualize individual regions and archaeological remains attributed to the Xiongnu.  The resulting model of this early steppe empire portrays a large-scale conquest polity with non-territorially defined border regions and a nomadic imperial power which superimposed a military and economically coercive influence over various regions of Central Asia.  This paper will re-examine material from Northern China within the context of the larger body of Xiongnu archaeology in order to exemplify the nature of the periphery as well as redefine the character of the core of the Xiongnu nomadic empire.

 

 

  1. Nomadism in Early Bronze Age Southern Transcaucasia: The Faunal Perspective

 

Belinda H. Monahan (Northwestern University)

 

The Early Bronze Age in southern Transcaucasia is distinguished by a remarkable uniformity of material culture, particularly ceramics, stretching from eastern Anatolia into northwestern Iran and related material culture appearing as far away as the Levant.  Many archaeologists have suggested that the uniformity of material culture reflects a uniformity in subsistence practices; particularly pastoral practices.  Yet, despite the emphasis put on the role of pastoralism in the Kura-Araxes economy, we know very little about pastoral practices in this time period from the primary source of information about these practices; very few sites from this time period in the southern Caucasus have published faunal remains.  This paper will present the faunal remains from the Early Bronze Age site of Gegharot, located in the Tsakahovit plain of Armenia; examining particularly the evidence for nomadic pastoralism.  By focusing on the faunal remains from a single site; the paper will be able to examine the over-arching model of the Kura-Araxes culture as based on pastoral nomadism; which will allow a re-examination of the modes of interaction between people which was the catalyst for the remarkable spread of this material culture. 

 

 

32.  The Agriculture of the Golden Horde

 

Leonard Nedashkovsky (Kazan State University)

 

Traditionally the Golden Horde seemed to the historians as a nomadic state with the low developed agriculture. But from the point of view of new archaeological data this opinion seems not correct.

 

At the settlements Bagaevskoe, Kolotov Buerak, Hmelevskoe I and Shiroky Buerak in Saratov region of Russia during our excavations of 2001-2003 a very valuable data was obtained as a result of flotation of the cultural layer and the filling of the investigated constructions. The processes were for the first time applied for the Golden Horde settlements.

 

From the lower unploughed horizon of the cultural layer and from the filling of revealed constructions on the settlement Shiroky Buerak 39 samples, on the Bagaevskoe settlement – 66 samples, on the Kolotov Buerak settlement – 17 samples, which were obtained by flotation, were taken for palaeobotanical investigations. From the pre-natural layers of trench III on Hmelevskoe I settlement 6 more samples were taken. The analysis was carried out in the Laboratory of Scientific Methods of the Institute of Archaeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences by E.Yu. Lebedeva. The noted absolute prevalence of millet in the samples (53.4% of all cereals), which exceeds rye (20.1%), wheat (19.6%), barley (5.9%), oats (0.7%) and peas (0.3%) taken together, can not be accidental.

 

 

  1. Gender and the Horse Culture in Bronze Age China

 

Sarah Milledge Nelson (University of Denver)

 

Many questions arise about the impact of horses on the rise of the state in East Asia, from the apparently sudden appearance of horses and chariots in the Shang dynasty to the theory of horse riders thundering into the Japanese islands in the Kofun period, thus establishing the Yamato state. Horses were important in the Three Kingdoms of the Korean peninsula, as well, as is inferred from mural paintings in Koguryo tombs, horse burials in Silla and the sumptuary laws of Silla which designate the numbers of horses allowed to men and women of the various ranks. Most of the horses in East Asian archaeology, known from representations or remains, are derived from Central Asian stock, rather than being descendants of the Mongolian pony. So many hidden assumptions about gender underlie the archaeological interpretations related to horses that it is worthwhile to examine the horse cultures of Central Asia for a fresh consideration of the varieties of gender roles and gender ideology there. This allows a new approach to the derivative East Asian horse-using cultures.   

 

 

  1. Fiber Technology in the Copper Age Botai Culture of Northern Kazakhstan

 

Sandra Olsen (Carnegie Museum of Natural History) and Deborah Harding (Carnegie Museum of Natural History)

 

The Copper Age Botai culture of Kazakhstan (ca 3500BC) is known for its horse-dominated economy, but other aspects of Botai lifeways are revealed through recent research.   One exciting new avenue of research is fiber technology, preserved through pottery impressions. Scanning electron microscopy and stereo optical microscopy were used to study the impressions.  Cordage impressions provide evidence for fiber spinning methods, suggesting a vegetal fiber, probably hemp, was used to make 2-ply S-twist cords.  Cloth impressions indicate that a simple twining method was used and that hemp was the likely raw material of choice. Horse phalanx female figurines are incised with a wide variety of incised designs that seem to reflect the feminine apparel of the time. Certain features on the figurines indicate the garment structure, while others reflect decorative elements.  A complete hemp dress was made to replicate a Botai woman’s dress and computer images were made to reconstruct several of the dress designs based on the incised phalanges. One potsherd appears to have impressions of a coiled basket, further elucidating the range of practices used in fiber technology.

 

 

  1. Metalwork in the Social and Cultural Landscape of Bronze Age Pastoralists

 

David L. Peterson (University of Chicago), Pavel Kuznetsov (Samara State Pedagogical University, Institute for the History and Archaeology of the Volga Region), Oleg Mochalov (Samara State Pedagogical University, Institute for the History and Archaeology of the Volga Region), Peter Northover (Oxford University), Emmett Brown, Audrey Brown

 

In the metallurgical province system, human orientation to the prehistoric landscape is characterized as centered on sources of copper ores, while images of ancient pastoral landscapes of Eurasia are crisscrossed with arrows representing cyclical migrations and folk movements.  Until recently there has been little interest in how different activities in the metal making process were dispersed across the ancient Eurasian landscape, and were organized spatially and temporally in relation to pastoralism.  We present the results of recent field investigations of Bronze Age sites, and new studies of copper-based metalwork and faunal assemblages from Samara oblast’.  In comparison with the Asian steppes further east, burial evidence indicates a similarly high socio-cultural value of livestock and metalwork. However, settlement plans and the organization of pastoral and metallurgical production indicate very different orientations to the landscape as it was constructed, and corresponding differences in society and culture. This example illustrates the need for continued research on the ancient Eurasian landscape, not as an environment that constrained production and determined the course of social evolution, but as made up of places linked together by practical activity and shared meanings that varied significantly in neighboring regions and in the history of individual localities.

 

 

  1. Domestic Architecture of the Late Bronze Age Sabatinovka Culture in the Steppe of the Southern Ukraine in the Light of Natural Resources

Magda Pieniazek-Sikora (Institut fuer Ur- und Fruehgeschichte Tuebingen)

Usually we think about the Pontic steppe area as a country dominated by nomadic and semi-nomadic people whose architecture is very little known. But this situation definitely changed in the Late Bronze Age. Then a sedentary economy developed and settlements with sophisticated domestic Architecture with broad use of stone emerged. We find settlements with isolated houses as well as with multi-roomed house-complexes. But how did people acquire their building materials? Limestone and granite were easy accessible in the Pontic steppe, occurring mainly in the slopes of the river valleys.  Getting provisions of timber, necessary for roof construction and archeologically documented in postholes and post-bases, was more difficult.  According to the latest palynological investigations, the Late Bronze Age Period coincided with the climatic optimum, where forest zones increased. This development concerned not only the forest islands on the lower Dnepr but also the forests in the river valleys, which expanded to the south from the southern limit of the forest-steppe. One can then suppose that the big part of the Sabatinovka Culture settlements appear in areas where access to timber of good quality (oak) was ensured (in the northern part of the steppe). But wood must have been probably imported to the settlements in the southern, dry steppe zone.

 

37.  As for the Nomads, They Lived on the Marsh Meadows: Understanding Shifting Bronze Age Settlement Patterns in the Samara River Valley, Russia

Laura M. S. Popova (University of Chicago)

During the Bronze Age, the Samara River Valley was a focal point for both kurgan cemeteries and settlements.  There has been little discussion, however, about why this particular river valley was so attractive to pastoralists of the Middle Volga region.  This paper seeks to link the shifting settlement patterns of the Samara Valley to the long term landscape history of the region, in an effort to show the ways in which social orders were embedded in the landscape.  Focusing in particular on the Bronze Age (approximately 3,200 – 1,000 B.C.), I will start to flesh out how people managed the land, how they were limited by particular practices, how they moved throughout the region, and how they interacted with their neighbors.  Starting with data from an off-site pollen core, I will reconstruct the local environment of Samara Valley.  Then by comparing these data with pollen and archaeological data from Bronze Age monuments in the region I will reflect on why the Samara River Valley was a hub of activity in the Late Bronze Age.  Lastly, I will discuss how our new understanding of the landscape history of this particular place can help us recognize the social landscape of other areas in the Middle Volga region.  

 

  1. Tauric Chersonesos: A Case History of an Interdisciplinary Archaeological Project in Crimea

 

Adam Rabinowitz (University of Texas at Austin) and Joseph Coleman Carter (University of Texas at Austin)

 

The Crimean peninsula has a long history as a nodal point for contact between the populations of Eastern Europe and Eurasia and the Mediterranean world.  The site of Chersonesos exemplifies this history: founded by Greek colonists in the 5th century BCE, it helped link the steppes with the Aegean and later connected the Byzantine Empire with the Rus’ and Khazars to the north and northeast.  Until Ukrainian independence, it was part of the closed naval city of Sevastopol.  In 1994, however, in a more open climate, the Institute of Classical Archaeology at the University of Texas began a collaboration with the National Preserve of Tauric Chersonesos.  This collaboration was intended to bring interdisciplinary perspectives to bear on the site to refine ideas about local life and wider cultural interactions across nearly 2000 years.  This paper proposes to outline the development of this multifaceted long-term research project, presenting its various elements and commenting on its focus on the sustainable integration of excavation, GIS, scientific research, archival practices, conservation, and public presentation.  An emphasis will be placed on the importance of maintaining constant communication in such a context, both between specialists in different areas and between collaborative partners with different research backgrounds.

 

 

39.  Tillya Tepe:  Aspects of Gender and Identity

 

Karen Rubinson (Barnard College)

 

Animal-Style’ Ornament and Gendered Meaning: An Exploration will explore the meanings of headdresses and neck ornaments of a group of male and female individuals excavated in the Altai Mountains to determine whether there are gender differences in the types of animals and their arrangements on the distinctive personal costume.

 

  1. Space and Society beyond Mount Qaf: Archaeological evidence and cultural contact between the Khazar Empire and the Islamic Caliphate

Irina Harris Shingiray (Boston University)

This paper will address two main topics concerning the cultural contact between the nomadic Khazars and the Islamic Caliphate during the period from the 7th to the 10th centuries AD. One concerns the nature, space, and complexity of the Khazar society before and after its political clash with the Caliphate in the area of their wider frontier region: the North-Eastern Caucasus, and especially
the West Caspian Corridor. Archaeological evidence from that area will be compared to the historical and geographic information compiled and “ordered” by the imperial scholars of the Caliphate about the people living beyond Mount Qaf (the Caucasus).  Second, by looking at local scale archaeological evidence of the nomads from that territory during the post-contact/war period, I will investigate the social and cultural transformations taking place in the nomadic society as a result of this cultural contact (such as the introduction of Islam; different use of geographic space). Basically, I would like to demonstrate how some of these cultural innovations were adopted and modified by the nomads on
the local group-scale, which allowed them to challenge and negotiate the power not only of their own state, but of the Islamic Caliphate itself.

 

  1. The Past in the Present: The Use of Ancient Symbols by Modern Nationalists in the Former Yugoslavia

 

Jennifer Skrmetti (University of Georgia)

 

History is essential to a sense of national unity; national mythologies are often used (or even created) to give people a sense of group identity.  In newly emerging nations, many nationalists turn to the past for symbols to serve as political capital, increasingly intertwining archaeology and nationalism.  Slobodan Milosevic tied the legend of Kosovo Polje to present-day Serbian control over the Kosovo region.  FYROM and Greece fight over the legacy of the ancient Macedonian Empire.  The destruction and rebuilding of the Mostar Bridge in Bosnia-Herzegovina, revealed attempts to sacrifice the past to the political climate of the present.  All are clear examples of an abuse of the past that must be understood,

while the lack of concrete connections between ancient and modern groups is remembered.

 

 

  1. Early Social Complexity in the South Caucasus: Recent Investigations of Project ArAGATS in the Tsaghkahovit Plain, Armenia

 


Adam T. Smith (University of Chicago), Ruben Badalyan (Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography, Armenia) and Pavel Avestisyan  
 
During the 15th century B.C., the societies of the South Caucasus underwent a convulsive transformation.  Peoples that for centuries had lived in socially stratified, predominantly mobile, pastoral communities rather suddenly found themselves members of complex, settled territorial polities complete with rigid social hierarchies and developed political institutions cloistered within stone-walled fortresses.  Traditional archaeological theories describe the emergence of social complexity as a slow evolutionary process founded upon settled villages and agricultural economics.  How then
could such radical transformations in social practice take place in the South Caucasus in such a short time out of a pastoral milieu?  What challenges does this case present for a general anthropology of complex societies?  Excavations from 1998 to 2003 at the Late Bronze Age fortresses of Gegharot and Tsaghkahovit, located in central Armenia, have provided dramatic new views upon the beginnings of social complexity in the region and an important riposte to long-dominant assumptions about its sources and "trajectories".

 

 

  1. Mercenaries and City Rulers: Early Turks in 6th-8th Century Transoxania

 

Sören Stark (University of Halle)

 

Interactions between the oasis states in Transoxania and the Eurasian steppes increased distinctively since the second half of the 6th century, when the Turk Qaghanat succeeded to establish its dominion over most of the pre-muslim minor states in Transoxania. During the next 150 years two distinctive levels of close political, economic and cultural interaction between oasis dwellers and the nomadic sphere can be observed: on the one hand the 'imperial level', i.e. interactions between Transoxanian (mostly Sogdian) princes, merchants and diplomats and the Qaghanat from the northern foothills of the Tianshan to presentday Mongolia, and on the other hand the 'local level' on the scale of the more or less autonomous oasis principality. While the 'imperial level' has been studied for a long time, the locale dimension still remains insufficiently explored in many aspects.

 

A close examination of archaeological, literary, epigraphical and numismatic sources reveals the presence of Turks with a nomadic background in many Transoxanian minor states. Surprisingly, they frequently act as members of the elite and even as city rulers. Relying rarely upon direct imperial support from the open steppes the origin of these Turkish minor potentates might have been rather that of condottieri, based upon personal retinues frequently mentioned as Turkish contingents in the service of various Sogdian principalities. Such retinues and their military and social aspects can be seen as a close link between the Sogdian aristocracy and the nomadic sphere, clearly displayed in a tendency toward 'nomadic' taste of the Sogdian elite as in dress, accessory and military equipment.

 

 

44. The Landscape of the Islamic Frontier: General remarks on archaeological features, medieval geographical representations and the importance of Islamic spatial discourses

 

Ian B. Straughn (University of Chicago)

 

Archaeological and historical approaches to the frontier between Muslim polities and the empires and territories beyond the scope of Islamic political authority have relied heavily on the descriptions and concepts provided by the medieval Arabic geographers to forge as social analysis of the material remains. What has often resulted is that the landscape between Islam and its neighbors has been cast as an instrument in the formation of a political ideology of conquest often associated with the well worn trope of jihad. This paper will offer a new discursive context for the production of Islamic frontier landscapes by engaging with the territorial categories of Islamic jurisprudence. Using the example of the frontier between the Islamic Caliphate and the Byzantine Empire this paper will argue that such an approach provides archaeologists with a framework for understanding how the landscape is not just a political tool but actively shapes social practice and spatial discourse. One key element is to examine how the frontier landscape is transformed from merely a set of nodal points (fortified towns, fortresses, and military outposts) linked by a need for defense, to a social product in which these sites are integrated into the landscape though various discourses and practices. The role of the Islamic legal doctrine of territoriality is central to understanding this transformation. This approach offers Eurasian archaeology a model for understanding the ways in which Islam contributed to changes in the landscape particularly at points of contact and conflict but also more generally.

 

 

45.  Foreign elements in the formation of social landscape of the early nomads in Pazyryk, Southern Siberia

 

Xin Wu (University of Pennsylvania)

 

My paper concerns the transmission of the art of foreign origins and their participations in the local social landscape of the early Eurasian nomads in the Altai region. The paper illustrates this process through the evidence of art from Iran, Kazakhstan and southern Siberia.

 

The famous wall hanging representing a confrontation between a seated figure and a horseman from the 5th kurgan at the Pazyryk burial ground in the Altai (5th-3rd centuries) has long been considered as the representative of the art created by the early nomads of the region. My studies of the art of the Sakas in eastern Kazakhstan and in Xinjiang, China, show that the tapestry has profound associations with the Saka groups living beyond the Achaemenid Persian imperial proper. Coming along with the wall hanging is other fully symbolically loaded images that were originally from Persia but transmitted to the Altai after passing the filter of the Sakas in eastern Kazakhstan. After reaching the Altai region, these images were linked successfully to the local society and gained important positions in the local symbolic repertoire.

 

The paper intends to offer a new approach for understanding the cultural interactions among different ethnic groups on the eastern Eurasian steppe. It also aims to provide a new pattern for illustrating the dynamics of the formation of social landscapes of the peoples in the region.  

 

 

46.  Archaeological Politics: Imaginary Identity of an Imaginary Geography

 

G. Bike Yazicioglu (University of Chicago)

 

Archaeology in Anatolia (modern Turkey) is built upon and still is nourished by a variety of academic traditions, most notably those of the Ancient Near East, European prehistory, and comparative 
Indo-European studies.  This is resultant from multiple factors such as the geographical location of the peninsula, the characteristics of its ancient material and textual record, and the historical contingencies 
of the 19th-20th centuries (A.D.).  In accordance with one of the main objectives of this conference (that of breaking apart the traditional notions of Eurasian landscape), this paper attempts to disentangle the dynamics behind the main tropes in the representation of Anatolia in the archaeological literature and political discourse.  It is argued that the common identification of the Anatolian peninsula as “the 
bridge between East and West” is a product of political and historical motivations of the Ottoman Empire and the Republic of Turkey, more than anything else.  The main premise of this paper is that a critical reading of recent political history in relationship with the history of archaeology as a discipline has the power to resolve unproductive archaeological debates and dissolve categorical redundancies by way of clarifying their role in official histories and in public consumption of archaeology.  This discussion will be followed by suggestions for more efficient and constructive methods of inquiry for a reconstruction of the archaeological landscape of Anatolia.

 

 

47.  Exchange Patterns along the Great Silk road during the Bronze Age (Third and Second Millennium BC)

 

Petar Zidarov (Tübingen University, Germany)

 

Independent scholarly research on the distribution patterns of different raw materials (such as tin, lapis lazuli and nephrite), artifacts (characteristic types of metal tools, weapons and jewelry, stone axes and pestles, chlorite weights and vases), as well as the dissemination of the domesticated equids and camels during the Bronze Age reveal trends so closely intertwining that one could suppose the existence of exchange network roughly comparable to the Great Silk road in later times. In this paper will be proposed an attempt at tentative reconstruction of exchange network linking Central Asia in the East with the Western part of the Bronze Age Old world through two main branches: Northwestern – towards the Black sea and the Carpathian region and Southwestern – towards the Near East. The main topics of discussion are aimed at (1) estimating the range of valuable objects and materials worth covering vast distances, (2) mapping the possible routes, by comparing the distribution of archaeological finds to the geographical features along the way and the documented caravan routes used in more recent periods, (3) naming the agents that might be held responsible for this interactions, following the present archaeological nomenclature and finally, (4) suggesting the possible means of transport.