The Indus Script: Texts, Concordance and Tables c4.s2.11

c4.s2.11

The gradual evolution of the Indus Civilization from the earlier neolithic cultures of the Indo-Iranian borderlands and the relationship of these cultures with those of the ancient Near East and particularly with the cultures of the Iranian plateau and Turkmenia have started being properly understood only during the past decade or so. The French excavations at Pirak (1968-74)¹⁵ and at Mehrgarh, Sibri and Nausharo (1974-87) have been really revolutionary in providing an unbroken stratigraphic sequence from the early 7th millennium to the middle of the 1st millennium B.C. in the Kachi plain, which leads from the Indus valley to the highlands of Baluchistan.¹⁶ The Italian excavations at Shahr-i Sokhta in Seistan,¹⁷ the American excavations at Tepe Yahya in Southeastern Iran,¹⁸ and the Soviet excavations in Central Asia¹⁹ are just some of the other crucial archaeological research projects of recent times which have created a veritable explosion of knowledge. The emerging new picture stresses the leading role played by the Proto-Elamites in the increasing cultural interaction in the Iranian plateau during the first half of the third millennium B.C.²⁰