Discovery
In the 1970s the Soviet archaeologist Viktor Sarianidi began excavating large Bronze Age settlements in the Murghab delta of Turkmenistan, ancient Margiana, and in northern Afghanistan, ancient Bactria. Similar sites were found in southern Uzbekistan. Sarianidi called the culture the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex; the French archaeologist Henri-Paul Francfort and others prefer the name Oxus civilisation, after the river, the Amu Darya, along which it lay.
The settlements
The culture's settlements were built around oases fed by rivers flowing from the mountains into the desert. Their characteristic buildings are large fortified compounds with thick walls and towers, laid out on regular plans. At Gonur Depe, the most extensively excavated, a central walled complex with buildings interpreted as a palace and temples was surrounded by other walled areas and cemeteries, including elaborate burials with wagons and animals. The people grew wheat and barley by irrigation, kept sheep, goats, cattle and camels, and made fine metalwork, stone vessels, seals with animal and mythological designs, and small composite figures of women in flounced garments.
Contacts
The Oxus civilisation was linked by trade with the Iranian plateau, Mesopotamia and the Indus. Indus-type seals, ivory, beads and pottery have been found at its sites, and objects of Oxus type appear in Baluchistan and Iran. On the Oxus itself, at Shortugai in north-eastern Afghanistan, archaeologists found a settlement of Harappan type, probably an outpost to obtain lapis lazuli and tin from the region.
The Indo-Iranian question
The culture has been drawn into the long debate about the arrival of Indo-Iranian speakers in Iran and India. Sarianidi argued that buildings at Gonur and Togolok were fire temples and that vessels contained traces of ephedra and other plants used to make a ritual drink comparable to the Vedic soma and Avestan haoma; these identifications have been strongly disputed. Other scholars see the culture as non-Indo-Iranian, but as a society with which incoming Indo-Iranian speakers from the steppe interacted, borrowing words and practices. Recent ancient DNA studies have found that people buried at Oxus sites were largely related to earlier populations of Iran and Central Asia, with a few individuals showing steppe and South Asian ancestry, consistent with movement through the region. The question remains debated.
Further reading
- Possehl, Gregory L. The Indus Civilization: A Contemporary Perspective. AltaMira Press, 2002
- Bryant, Edwin. The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture. Oxford University Press, 2001
- Parpola, Asko. The Roots of Hinduism. Oxford University Press, 2015
See also
- Indus Valley Civilization — The Indus Valley Civilization (IVC), also called the Harappan Civilization, was a Bronze Age urban culture that flourished across the Indus river system and beyond between roughly 2600 and 1900 BCE, one of the world's three earliest urban civilizations alongside Egypt and Mesopotamia.
- The Aryan question — The Aryan question concerns how Indo-Aryan languages came to be spoken in South Asia, and is the most contested problem in the study of ancient India.
- Indus trade with Mesopotamia — The Indus civilization traded with Mesopotamia by sea and land, and is generally identified with the Meluhha named in Mesopotamian cuneiform records as a source of carnelian, ivory and timber.
This entry was last revised on 12 November 2026.