Book
English
ID: <
10670/1.hm8kqp>
Abstract
The large territory of the Central Asian steppes, extending from the Caspian Sea to China, has witnessed, as from the 2nd millennium BCE during the Bronze Age (Andronovo and Begazy-Dandybaj cultures) and then the Iron Age (Saka culture), the coexistence of various modes of economic exploitation: sedentary agriculture, semi-nomadism and pastoral transhumant nomadism, the latter completely established around the Early Iron Age. These cultures developed specific mortuary practices, centred on an important social hierarchy that one can perceive through the study of vast necropolises. In the absence of cities, funerary space played a fundamental part in the management of territorial space, and therefore in the economy.