TAP – Togolok Archaeological Project: Redefining ideas on the BMAC through the latest innovative data from Bronze Age Margiana (southern Turkmenistan)

• Applicant: Barbara Cerasetti, Ph.D.
• Subject Area: Prehistory and World Archaeology
• Term: since 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 521114089

In the 2nd millennium BCE, Central Asia and neighboring regions were affected by the urban and economic fluorescence of the Bactria Margiana Archaeological Complex (BMAC). Many scholars argue that the remarkable transformations triggered by this phenomenon led to a profound crisis and irreversible collapse of the socio-political and cultural system, meanwhile other scholars view these changes as a continuation of the previous occurrences. There are three key issues that can help us better understand the centrality of BMAC phenomenon in Bronze Age Margiana, and throughout Central Asia, and the effects of its dissolution at the end of the 2nd millennium BCE. The first is a chronological issue, where diverse, stand-alone datasets are difficult to tie together within a meaningful social scale. The second is the position of the BMAC vis-à-vis its regional contemporaries and economic partners in the Indus Valley, the Iranian plateau, the Arabian Peninsula, and Mesopotamia. The BMAC decline was certainly influenced by their fragmentation in the early 2nd millennium BCE, but the mechanism of this economic and political transformation remain poorly understood. Lastly, the apparent intensification of interactions between BMAC farming communities and non-local agropastoralists, linked to the Andronovo cultural community of Bronze Age Central Eurasia. The influence these relationships had on the transformation of BMAC is still the subject of heated debates among specialists. The stratigraphic study of a single long-lived BMAC site such as Togolok 1 can potentially interrelate all three of these issues and clarify how BMAC related to earlier and later occupation in ancient Margiana.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants