Increasingly, however, the concept of a single homogeneous culture covering 3 million square kilometers and enduring for over a millennium has become… - 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 almost complete absence of evidence of contact between the Bactrian Margiana complex and the cultures of the steppe is made the more enigmatic by the evidence of settlement surveys. Gubaev, Koshelenko, and Tosi (1998) have found numerous sites of the steppe cultures near Bactrian Margiana settlements. The evidence therefore suggests intentional avoidance. Clearly this situation, should it be correctly interpreted, requires theoretical insights that await elucidation.

The wave of nationalism in Russia has given rise to numerous publications of highly dubious merit. Thus, a monograph published by the Library of Ethnography and sanctioned by the Russian Academy of Science, Kto Oni i Otkuda (Chesko 1998), claims the Arctic to be the original homeland of the Vedas and Russian the language with the closest affinity to Sanskrit.

Russian scholars working in the Eurasiatic steppes are nearly unanimous in their belief that the Andronovo culture and its variant expressions are Indo-Iranian. Similarly, Russian and Central Asian scholars working on the Bactrian Margiana complex share the conviction that it is Indo-Iranian. The two cultures are contemporary but very different. Passages from the Avesta and the Rigveda are quoted by various researchers to support the Indo-Iranian identity of both, but these passages are sufficiently general as to permit the Plains Indians an Indo-Iranian identity. Ethnicity is permeable and multi-dimensional, and the “ethnic indicators” employed by Kuzmina can be used to identify the Arab, the Turk, and the Iranian, three completely distinctive ethnic and linguistic groups. Ethnicity and language are not so easily linked with an archaeological signature.