Bronze Age Central Asia

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paula Doumani Dupuy
Keyword(s):  
Central Asia ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Social History ◽  
Principal Characteristics ◽  
History Of Research ◽  
The Social ◽  
Variable Nature ◽  
Agricultural Societies ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Bronze Age

This article focuses on the principal characteristics and features of the Bronze Age of the steppes, deserts, mountain foothills, and oases of Central Asia. It outlines the history of research on the region’s mobile pastoral and settled agricultural societies during the third and second millennium BC. The article examines how approaches to the social history and economy have changed from one of macro-studies of regional assemblages toward more targeted investigations of the dynamic and variable nature of this period. Finally, an overview of pottery, metal, and textile assemblages and analyses is used to form a discussion on craft production practices, consumption, and regional exchange across Central Asia.

scholarly journals TESTING THE MIDDLE GROUND IN ASSYRO-ANATOLIAN MARRIAGES OF THE KĀRUM PERIOD

Iraq ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 79 ◽  
pp. 71-83
Author(s):  
Yağmur Heffron
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Social History ◽  
Central Anatolia ◽  
Middle Ground ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Cultural Contact ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Middle Bronze Age ◽  
Dynamic Time

Central Anatolia in the Middle Bronze Age is marked by a well-documented Old Assyrian presence during the kārum period (20th–17th century b.c.), a dynamic time of long-distance trade and cultural contact. One of the idiosyncrasies of the social history of this period is a special bigamous arrangement which allowed Assyrian men to enter second marriages on the condition that one wife remained at home in Aššur, and the other in Anatolia. In testing the extent to which a middle ground for cross-cultural compromise is recognisable in such Assyro-Anatolian marriage practices, this article considers whether the terminology used in reference to the first and second wives (amtum and aššatum respectively) can be interpreted as the crucial element of misunderstanding in middle ground formation.

scholarly journals The Mysteries of Lake Copais and the Island Fortress of Gla

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-38
Author(s):  
Therese Ghembaza ◽  
David Windell
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Agricultural Production ◽  
History Of Research ◽  
Large Dams ◽  
History Of ◽  
Middle Helladic ◽  
The Bronze Age

The Bronze Age drainage of Lake Copais, Boeotia, is unique within Europe as the largest and most complex work of engineering of the period. Comprising large dams, polder dykes, canals, massive levees, cuttings and tunnels, it made at least 95km² of drained lake bed available for agricultural production. The first polders were established in the Middle Helladic period with great extensions in the Late Helladic. During the latter period the largest of all the Mycenaean citadels was constructed at Gla which had been a rocky island in the lake prior to the drainage. But exactly what type of settlement it was still remains something of a mystery. This paper draws together the history of research on the citadel of Gla.

Personifying Prehistory

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joanna Brück
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Social Power ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
History Of Research ◽  
History Of ◽  
Human World ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Bronze Age

The Bronze Age is frequently framed in social evolutionary terms. Viewed as the period which saw the emergence of social differentiation, the development of long-distance trade, and the intensification of agricultural production, it is seen as the precursor and origin-point for significant aspects of the modern world. This book presents a very different image of Bronze Age Britain and Ireland. Drawing on the wealth of material from recent excavations, as well as a long history of research, it explores the impact of the post-Enlightenment 'othering' of the non-human on our understanding of Bronze Age society. There is much to suggest that the conceptual boundary between the active human subject and the passive world of objects, so familiar from our own cultural context, was not drawn in this categorical way in the Bronze Age; the self was constructed in relational rather than individualistic terms, and aspects of the non-human world such as pots, houses, and mountains were considered animate entities with their own spirit or soul. In a series of thematic chapters on the human body, artefacts, settlements, and landscapes, this book considers the character of Bronze Age personhood, the relationship between individual and society, and ideas around agency and social power. The treatment and deposition of things such as querns, axes, and human remains provides insights into the meanings and values ascribed to objects and places, and the ways in which such items acted as social agents in the Bronze Age world.

Aḥmad Yasavī and the Ismāʿīlīs of Badakhshān: Towards a New Social History of Sufi-Shīʿī Relations in Central Asia

2020 ◽  
Vol 63 (5-6) ◽  
pp. 643-681
Author(s):  
Daniel Beben
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Central Asia ◽  
Social History ◽  
Social Engagement ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Muslim Communities ◽  
The Impact

Abstract This article examines how a text attributed to the renowned Central Asian Sufi figure Aḥmad Yasavī came to be found within a manuscript produced within the Ismāʿīlī Shīʿī community of the Shughnān district of the Badakhshān region of Central Asia. The adoption of this text into an Ismāʿīlī codex suggests an exchange between two disparate Islamic religious traditions in Central Asia between which there has hitherto been little evidence of contact. Previous scholarship on Ismāʿīlī-Sufi relations has focused predominately on the literary and intellectual engagement between these traditions, while the history of persecution experienced by the Ismāʿīlīs at the hands of Sunnī Muslims has largely overshadowed discussions of the social relationship between the Ismāʿīlīs and other Muslim communities in Central Asia. I demonstrate that this textual exchange provides evidence for a previously unstudied social engagement between Ismāʿīlī and Sunnī communities in Central Asia that was facilitated by the rise of the Khanate of Khoqand in the 18th century. The mountainous territory of Shughnān, where the manuscript under consideration originated, has been typically represented in scholarship as isolated prior to the onset of colonial interest in the region in the late 19th century. Building upon recent research on the impact of early modern globalization on Central Asia, I demonstrate that even this remote region was significantly affected by the intensification of globalizing processes in the century preceding the Russian conquest. Accordingly, I take this textual exchange as a starting point for a broader re-evaluation of the Ismāʿīlī-Sufi relationship in Central Asia and of the social ‘connectivity’ of the Ismāʿīlīs and the Badakhshān region within early modern Eurasia.

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