Philip L. Kohl is Professor of Anthropology and Kathryn W. Davis Professor of Slavic Studies at Wellesley College. He is the author of The Bronze Age Civilization of Central Asia: Recent Soviet Discoveries, Recent Discoveries in Transcaucasia and co-editor of Nationalism, Politics, and the Practice of Archaeology.

• 1. Archaeological theory and archaeological evidence; 2. The Chalcolithic Prelude - from social hierarchies and giant settlements to the emergence of mobile economies, ca. 4500–3500 BC; 3. The Caucasus - donor and recipient of materials, technologies, and peoples to and from the ancient Near East; 4. Taming the steppes - the development of miblie economies: from cattle herders with wagons to horseback riders tending mixed herds; the continued eastward expansion of large-scale metallurgical production and exchange; 5. Entering a sown world of irrigation agriculture - from the steppes to Central Asia and beyond: processes of movement, assimilation, and transformation into the 'civilized' world east of Sumer; 6. The circulation of peoples and materials - evolution, devolution, and recurrent social formations on the Eurasian steppes and in West Asia: patterns and processes of interconnection during later prehistory.

'The book consists of six harmoniously and logically structured chapters. … interestingly written and well illustrated.' American Journal of Archaeology