In "Origins of Agriculture in Western Central Asia,"
archaeologist David R. Harris addresses questions of when, how, and
why agriculture and settled village life began east of the Caspian
Sea. The book describes and assesses evidence from archaeological
investigations in Turkmenistan and adjacent parts of Iran,
Uzbekistan, and Afghanistan in relation to present and past
environmental conditions and genetic and archaeological data on the
ancestry of the crops and domestic animals of the Neolithic period.
It includes accounts of previous research on the prehistoric
archaeology of the region and reports the results of a recent
environmental-archaeological project undertaken by British,
Russian, and Turkmen archaeologists in Turkmenistan, principally at
the early Neolithic site of Jeitun (Djeitun) on the southern edge
of the Karakum desert.This project has demonstrated unequivocally
that agropastoralists who cultivated barley and wheat, raised goats
and sheep, hunted wild animals, made stone tools and pottery, and
lived in small mudbrick settlements were present in southern
Turkmenistan by 7,000 years ago (c. 6,000 BCE calibrated), where
they came into contact with hunter-gatherers of the "Keltiminar
Culture." It is possible that barley and goats were domesticated
locally, but the available archaeological and genetic evidence
leads to the conclusion that all or most of the elements of the
Neolithic "Jeitun Culture" spread to the region from farther west
by a process of demic or cultural diffusion that broadly parallels
the spread of Neolithic agropastoralism from southwest Asia into
Europe.By synthesizing for the first time what is currently known
about the origins of agriculture in a large part of Central Asia,
between the more fully investigated regions of southwest Asia and
China, this book makes a unique contribution to the worldwide
literature on transitions from hunting and gathering to
agriculture.
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