A ‘Shoehorn’ at Altyn Depe A Biased Application of the Urban Revolution Model of Vere Gordon Childe (1950)

Vidale M. Bonora G.L.
2023 Brepols Publishers

Journal of Urban Archaeology
2023 #8 115 - 125 pp.

This paper reconsiders the archaeological picture and the involved historical narratives proposed by important seasons of excavations at the third-millennium bc site of Altyn Depe (Turkmenistan) by the former Soviet academy. Thanks to these intensive efforts the site is and will remain crucial for the reconstruction of the evolution of social complexity in southern Central Asia and the neighbouring civilizations; however, we question the validity of some assumptions and interpretations, which appear somehow biased by an aprioristic desire to validate the influential paradigms on early urbanism of V. G. Childe, even at the expense of a realistic assessment of the archaeological evidence. Finally, the paper proposes some new hypotheses which might be tested by future fieldwork.

Altyn Depe , archaeological evidence of early urbanism , urban revolution , V. G. Childe

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Department of Cultural Heritage of the University of Padua, Italy
CNR (National Research Council) — ISPC (Institute of Heritage Science) Italian Archaeological Expedition, Kazakhstan

Department of Cultural Heritage of the University of Padua
CNR (National Research Council) — ISPC (Institute of Heritage Science) Italian Archaeological Expedition

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