Tuesday, March 12, 2013
Mound
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I have been cataloging sites of potential archaeological interest in Afghanistan and now I see them everywhere I look. This one is near Dzhumabazar, Uzbekistan, southeast of Samarkand. I have no idea what it is or from when it might date, but the mound itself seems fairly extensive, with what may be another site a kilometer or two to the northeast and perhaps several smaller structures scattered about.
The combination of circular and rectangular enclosures, here, remind me of a smaller version of Old Merv, in Turkmenistan.
Thursday, March 7, 2013
The problem with Swat
Maju is hoping that the Swat culture will validate his faith in Kurganism and, to be honest, I actually wish it was true.
If that culture was in fact intrusive, and if it did derive from the BMAC, and if indeed those people brought an Indo-European language through the Khyber pass, then I should be thrilled. Among other things, it would offer a credible explanation for proto-Tocharian, one in better agreement with modern archeology. But that is a lot of "ifs".
What we know from the archaeological record is that, if anyone invaded anyone, it was the Harappans 'invading' the BMAC, when some centuries before Swat they established a trading colony at Shortugai, on the Amu Darya. From then on, the two were presumably in contact and foreign trade or cultural influence along an apparent trade route should not surprise us. After the Harappan collapse, sites peripheral to the Indus homeland seem to have generally went their separate ways as the influence of the centralized culture waned. We should therefore rather expect Gandhara to be drawn toward the Afghan sphere and if someone wishes to call that an, "Indo-Aryan Invasion", then I might not even object too strenuously.
But that still leaves the question of what language, or indeed languages, the BMAC spoke. There is no clear answer to that so far and, since they don't appear to have left a written language behind, we may never know. Reports that Bactrian Margiana spoke Indo-Iranian rest upon the claims of V I Sarianidi and those claims do not withstand scrutiny.
Assuming that the BMAC did in fact speak an Indo-European language, at least for the sake of argument, then it is difficult to see how the Kurgan hypothesis can be comfortably sustained. If Bactrian Margiana was Indo-European, then archeology suggests that agricultural tribes in Afghanistan, on the Iranian plateau, in southern Turkmenistan, and in western Tajikistan, may also have spoken Indo-European languages in the late fourth millennium BCE. I don't have a problem with that, since in my ignorance I have no problem with a language riding the Neolithic wave through the oases of Central Asia. But how can this be squared with the claim that proto-Indo-European arose and spread with a horse-and-wheel culture from south-west Russia?
If that culture was in fact intrusive, and if it did derive from the BMAC, and if indeed those people brought an Indo-European language through the Khyber pass, then I should be thrilled. Among other things, it would offer a credible explanation for proto-Tocharian, one in better agreement with modern archeology. But that is a lot of "ifs".
What we know from the archaeological record is that, if anyone invaded anyone, it was the Harappans 'invading' the BMAC, when some centuries before Swat they established a trading colony at Shortugai, on the Amu Darya. From then on, the two were presumably in contact and foreign trade or cultural influence along an apparent trade route should not surprise us. After the Harappan collapse, sites peripheral to the Indus homeland seem to have generally went their separate ways as the influence of the centralized culture waned. We should therefore rather expect Gandhara to be drawn toward the Afghan sphere and if someone wishes to call that an, "Indo-Aryan Invasion", then I might not even object too strenuously.
But that still leaves the question of what language, or indeed languages, the BMAC spoke. There is no clear answer to that so far and, since they don't appear to have left a written language behind, we may never know. Reports that Bactrian Margiana spoke Indo-Iranian rest upon the claims of V I Sarianidi and those claims do not withstand scrutiny.
Assuming that the BMAC did in fact speak an Indo-European language, at least for the sake of argument, then it is difficult to see how the Kurgan hypothesis can be comfortably sustained. If Bactrian Margiana was Indo-European, then archeology suggests that agricultural tribes in Afghanistan, on the Iranian plateau, in southern Turkmenistan, and in western Tajikistan, may also have spoken Indo-European languages in the late fourth millennium BCE. I don't have a problem with that, since in my ignorance I have no problem with a language riding the Neolithic wave through the oases of Central Asia. But how can this be squared with the claim that proto-Indo-European arose and spread with a horse-and-wheel culture from south-west Russia?
Monday, March 4, 2013
Michael E Smith, on ideology and scholarship:
"When we allow personal ideological bias to rule our scholarly work, we limit the value of our research to answer real questions and to contribute to broader social and scientific debates. If you have an ideological axe to grind, either leave scholarship and go into politics, or else find ways to achieve a level of scholarly objectivity in your research and writing."Via John Hawks.
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