Prehistoric Archeological Surveys and Excavations in Afghanistan: 1959-1960 and 1961-1963

Abstract

Afghanistan has long been considered an important transmitter of culture in the historic periods. Buddhism, for example, reached the Far East from Gandhara (the classical name for southern Afghanistan and parts of north-western West Pakistan). Recent research indicates that the foothills of northern Afghanistan may have been one of the early centers of incipient agriculture, transitional between the food gathering of the Paleolithic and the food production of the Neolithic. In addition, Upper and possibly Middle ("Mousterian") Paleolithic industries have been identified.

Afghanistan's Ethnic Groups Share a Y-Chromosomal Heritage Structured by Historical Events

“…In northern Afghanistan, flake tools found in Dara Dadil, Darra Chakhmakh, and elsewhere indicate the probable existence of Middle Paleolithic industries [1]. Northern Afghanistan also sits in a region of the development of the earliest agricultural communities, marked by domestication of the wheat/barley, sheep/goat/cattle complex leading to the Neolithic revolution (10,000–7,000 ya), later supporting the economy of early urban Bronze Age civilizations in Central Asia at the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex (4300–3700 ya) and in India at the Indus Valley (5300–3800 ya) [2].…”

University of Rome Carbon-14 Dates V

“…Puglisi. Comment: date obtained agrees with Layer III industry and is to be compared to radiocarbon age, Hv-425, 8650 ± 100 (Hannover III) of Gravel 2 upper layers, from prehistoric-historic deposit of Gar-i-Mar rock shelter near Aq Kupruk, 100 km S Mazar-i-Sharif, North Afghanistan, in which sequence of two industries similar to that of Darra Kalon has been found (Dupree, 1964).…”

Revolution in the Urban Revolution: The Emergence of Indus Urbanization

“…This excursion into the rise of the ancient cities of the Indus presents archaeologists, and those interested in the process of culture change, with a case of paroxysmal change that suggests the kind of step in the rate of change noted by Braidwood & Willey some years ago (6:35 1; 1: [17][18]. While my position here is not intended to be a robust, well-developed theory, it points out some important culture-historical phenomena and offers significant con trasts to other urbanization processes in Bronze Age Asia.…”

“…More recent work in Afghanistan, on the borders of the region under investigation here, at the sites of Ghar-i-Mar (17,18) and Aq Kupruk II (18,51,68) sheds further light on the domestication process there and gives archaeologists reason to suspect that this way of life had its beginnings in the early millennia of the Holocene. While much needs to be done to confirm the Ghar-i-Mar and Aq Kupruk II data, which suggest that food production began in the region at ca.…”