'Pots are not people' : recent books on the archaeology and history of central Eurasia

This essay reviews three recent works on the history of the Eurasian steppes. They all touch in different ways on the fundamental challenge of how one can discern cultures and ethnicities from the archaeological record. In particular, they touch on the related problems of the origins of pastoral nomadism (and specifically of horse riding in the Inner Asian steppe) and of the Indo-European languages.8 page(s