Dynamics of Human Occupations and Evolutions of Settlements in the Bukhara Oasis

Date: 

Tuesday, April 4, 2017, 4:00pm to 6:00pm

Location: 

CMES, Rm 102, 38 Kirkland St Cambridge, MA 02138

 

Dynamics of Human Occupations and Evolutions of Settlements in the Bukhara Oasis

 

 

Rocco Rante

Archaeologist, Louvre Museum

 

This talk focuses on the dynamics of human occupations ensuing from water needs in the area of the Zerafšan delta. The recent geo-archaeological researches and OSL dating of paleochannels directed under the aegis of the Louvre Museum brought to light the water changes since Neolithic, generating a change on human behavior, which showed since the beginning an important evolution of settlements and a few later a transformation of commercial exchanges. The recent discoveries also carried out the exponential increasing of settlements within the oasis and the development of the urban characters.

 

Rocco Rante is an archaeologist of the Louvre Museum. Rante studied archaeology at the University La Sapienza of Rome, and specialized in Iranian and Islamic Archaeology and Art History. He obtained a PhD in the University of Aix en Provence in Islamic Archaeology and Art History. He participated and directed several archaeological missions, in Rayy and Nishapur between 2005 and 2009. Since 2009 he has directed the French-Uzbek Archaeological Mission in the Bukhara Oasis. He recently published Revisited Nishapur (Oxbow Books 2013), Rayy: from its Origin to the Mongol Invasion (Brill 2015) and Greater Khorasan (De Gruyter 2015).

 

Chair: Roy P. Mottahedeh, Gurney Research Professor of History