Proceedings of the First International Congress on Central Asian Archaeology held at the University of Bern, 4–6 February 2016

An exceptional collection by a wide variety of archaeologists that speak to discoveries in the past decades in Central Asia and what they may imply for cultural development in the wider region, including the ancient Indus area (see the article on Gonur Depe in Turkmenistan for details on this). The two charts from the book shown above (the first is a close-up on the time around the Bronze Age) lists some of these many cultures and how they compare to other know ancient civilizations and their periods of settlement, including ancient Indus periods.

The entire book is free to download, part of an open-access publishing trend that is bringing more and more archaeological research to the wider public faster than ever before. Well-illustrated, it covers discoveries in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. For those into wider ancient archaeological currents and themes, indispensable.

Harrassowitz Verlag, Wiesbaden, Germany, 2019