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Document Details :

Title: Archaeological transformations
Subtitle: crossing the pastoral/agricultural bridge
Author(s): KOHL, Philip L.
Journal: Iranica Antiqua
Volume: 37    Date: 2002   
Pages: 151-190
DOI: 10.2143/IA.37.0.121

Abstract :
The concept of an archaeological culture, however problematic in itself, is based on detecting similarities in material remains that are relatively restricted in time and space. What happens when a people moves or changes fundamentally its way of life, switching from an agriculturally based to a pastorally based economy or the reverse? The same people or their direct descendants now exhibit a different archaeological culture. How can we detect such archaeological transformations? This essay looks at two such transformations: the collapse of the gigantic Tripol’ye settlements south of Kiev in the first half of the IVth millennium BC and the settlement or peopling of the lowland plains of Margiana and Bactria at the end of the IIIrd millennium BC.

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