Although ceramics from the Andronovo cultures of the steppe have been found at Togolok 1 and 21, Kelleli, Taip, Gonur, and Takhirbai, Sarianidi (1998… - C. C. Lamberg-Karlovsky (ed.). Archaeological thought in America. 357 pages, 35 illustrations. 1989. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press; ISBN 0-521-35452-8 hardback £35 & $39.50

The idea of a distant homeland and an expansive migration to Central Asia is difficult if not impossible to maintain, but the origin of the Bactrian Margiana complex remains a fundamental issue. Although some scholars advance the notion that it has indigenous roots, the fact remains that its material culture is not easily derived from the preceding Namazga IV culture. Its wide distribution, from southeastern Iran to Baluchistan and Afghanistan, suggests that its beginnings might lie in this direction—an area of enormous size and an archaeological terra nullius. In fact, the Bactrian Margiana complex of Central Asia may turn out to be its northernmost extension, while its heartland may lie in the vast areas of unexplored Baluchistan and Afghanistan.

The vast majority of the Bactrian Margiana seals contain motifs, styles, and even material that are entirely foreign to the repertoire of seals from Syro-Anatolia, Mesopotamia, the Gulf, and the Indus (Baghestani 1997). They are of a thoroughly distinctive type and are to be seen as indigenous to the Central Asian Bronze Age world and not as derivative from any other region. They have been found in the Indus civilization, on the Iranian Plateau, at Susa, and in the Gulf. Amiet (1984) and Potts (1994) have documented the wide distribution of Bactrian Margiana–complex materials, and it is in this context that the specific parallels to the Syro-Anatolian region are to be appreciated. The wide scatter of a limited number of artifacts does not privilege any area as a homeland for the complex. The very limited number of parallels between the Bactrian Margiana complex and Syro-Anatolia signifies the unsurprising fact that, at the end of the 3d and the beginning of the 2d millennium, interregional contacts in the Near East brought people from the Indus to Mesopotamia and from Egypt to the Aegean into contact.

In their environmental settings, subsistence economies, and material cultures, the Andronovo and the Bactrian Margiana complex could not be more different. Renfrew favors an Indo-Iranian identity for the Andronovo, and he fully realizes that there is not a shred of evidence that identifies the Andronovo with the traditional homeland of the Indo-Iranian-speakers either on the Iranian Plateau or in South Asia.