Conference theme

Central Asia is a huge region characterized by a rich variety of ecologies, climates, geographical environments, social systems, languages and cultures. Within Central Asia multiple cultural exchanges took place. At the same time, Central Asia stood in bi-directional exchanges with neighboring regions such as the Pontic Steppe, the Near East, the Indian Subcontinent and East Asia. In geographical terms, Central Asia is defined as comprising Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Southern Siberia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Xinjiang. The timeframe is from the Early Bronze Age to the end of the 14th century CE.

A key precondition for these multifaceted contacts and exchanges was mobility. Such mobility concerned people, goods and products as well as ideas, concepts and innovations. Whereas the past second International Conference on Central Asian Archaeology (2020) addressed the question of contacts between cultures, the forthcoming conference focusses how such cultural contacts took place. It is well known from archaeological data that goods or ideas were moved across great distances, but it often remains vague how these movements relate to people’s mobility. Postulated physical migrations and transmissions of goods and ideas become verifiable and comprehensive only by demonstrating the corresponding processes.

Cultural transfers may occur through mass or individual migrations, commercial activities, proselytism, spread of technical innovations or military conflicts. All these cultural transmitters are linked to mobility. They are for their parts often facilitated by factors such as environmental and climatic changes, population pressure or innovations like the domestication of the horse and the wheel.

Not only people and goods can move, but also ideas: Technologies, values, scripts, languages and religions spread through cultural contacts and exchange processes. The modes of this intellectual mobility are very different and often very difficult to grasp, and will thus also be a topic of the conference.

Conversely, taking mobility and corresponding innovations as starting point, the question is what kind of cultural transfers and contacts were sparked by innovations in the field of mobility.

An outstanding tool to detect and verify migrations are archaeogenetics which are increasingly growing in importance. Archaeogenetic studies and isotopic analyses help to discern and understand the interconnectedness of different human populations and the emergence of shared cultural contents. For this reason, the conference will include a session dedicated to archaeogenetics in order to illustrate the potential of this scientific approach. (The archaeogenetists for this session will be invited separately.)

The objectives of the conference are:

1. To contribute to the understanding of how cultural transmission processes developed and to define the role of mobility therein. Such processes may have taken place within Central Asia, out of Central Asia or into Central Asia from other regions.
2. To stimulate a discussion about the opportunities and benefits offered by archaeogenetics.

Papers

Participants are expected to deliver a paper and to submit an abstract in English. The oral presentation of papers is limited to 20 minutes plus discussion. Participants may submit only one abstract.

The papers presented must be based upon new archaeological investigations, surveys and discoveries. The papers should be the result of original research and should not be a restatement of material and data already available somewhere else in secondary literature. Papers that have been published elsewhere are not accepted.
The inclusion of archaeogenetic aspects in the papers is welcome but not a precondition.

There will be presentations and discussions in the plenary, no parallel sessions.