Reliance upon migrations as the principal agent of social change has been typical of Russian archaeological interpretations, along with a blurring of… - 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

Contemporary methodologies, linguistic or archaeological, for determining the spoken language of a remote archaeological culture are virtually nonexistent. Simplified notions of the congruence between an archaeological culture, an ethnic group, and a linguistic affiliation millennia before the existence of texts is mere speculation, often with a political agenda. Archaeology has a long way to go before its methodology allows one to establish which cultural markers, pottery, architecture, burials, etc., are the most reliable for designating ethnic identity.

The identity of the Indo-Iranians remains elusive. When they are identified in the archaeological record it is by allegation rather than demonstration.

Sarianidi (1990) advocates a late-2d-millennium chronology for the Bactrian Margiana complex, describes it as the result of a migration from southeastern Iran, and identifies it as Indo-Iranian,.. There is absolutely no doubt, as is amply documented by Pierre Amiet (1984), of the existence of Bactrian Margiana material remains at Susa, Shahdad, and Tepe Yahya, but there is every reason to doubt that these parallels indicate that the complex originated in southeastern Iran. The limited materials of this complex are intrusive in each of the sites on the Iranian Plateau as they are in sites of the Arabian peninsula (Potts 1994).