The Namazga Civilization: An Overview

It became apparent during two exchange visits to the Soviet Union in 1978 and 19791 that the only major English summaries of the Aeneolithic and Bronze Age remains from Central Asia2 were dated and did not include adequate descriptions of major discoveries, such as the Murghab Delta sites. An immediate solution to this problem suggested itself: a collection of translated articles which both presented the latest discoveries in the area and illustrated current techniques and methods of analysis used by Soviet archeologists. In December 1978 I discussed the idea of such a publication with V. M. Masson, Director of the Central Asia and Caucasus Section of the Leningrad Branch of the Institute of Archeology, USSR Academy of Sciences, who agreed that such a publication was needed. He kindly provided me with a list of articles that he considered representative of current work in southern Central Asia.3 Although several articles were commissioned especially for this volume and every attempt was made to present the most recent findings, the pace of investigations has been so rapid that major studies have already appeared that have not been included in this volume.4 This preface will attempt to evaluate the significance of this recent work by analyzing the ecological setting and assessing the scale of Bronze Age developments in southern Central Asia. First, it will summarize previous work in the area and then analyze the gradual and largely indigenous development of a uniform and distinctive Bronze Age civilization that arose in what has been termed "the northeastern frontier of the ancient Near East." atic investigations in Central Asia, which began scarcely thirty years ago, already have documented an important chapter in the prehistory of the greater Near East. It is hoped that this volume of translations will make available some of this recent work to a broader scholarly community and help facilitate additional cooperation between archeologists of various nations. Our understanding of cultural evolution, in general, and of the unique and pivotal role of southern Central Asia, in particular, can only increase and benefit from such cooperation.