Uncovering Kimirek-Kum 1: Exploring a Forgotten Delta and Central Asia’s Bronze Age-Iron Age Transition in Central Uzbekistan

This lecture will take place in person at ISAW.

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In Central Asia, the Late Bronze – Early Iron Age transition stretched over some 600 years (ca. 1600-1000 BC). During this period, regional-scale climate change coincided with major political-economic restructuring and significant breaks in trade networks, production technologies, and material cultural traditions. At the local scale, the LBA-EIA transition manifested in numerous co-existing archaeological cultures, whose chronological and material cultural overlaps defy simple explanations of continuity, tradition, and adaptation. These issues are brought into focus through recent investigations at the LBA-EIA site of Kimirek-Kum 1 (ca. 1200 BCE), located in a long-dry ancient delta in what is now the Kyzylkum desert of central Uzbekistan. This talk outlines the results and ongoing archaeological investigations of KK1’s diverse remains, including ceramic and metallurgical analyses, bio-archaeological and ecological studies, and broader palaeo-hydrological and landscape investigations. Merging these avenues of inquiry reveals that KK1’s inhabitants actively invested in the local ecology, maintained skills in metallurgy and jewelry production, and participated in far-flung exchange networks – hints of the complex interplay between local communities and regional processes during Central Asia’s Late Bronze – Early Iron Age transition.

Dr. Lynne Rouse is an anthropologically-trained archaeologist, specializing in landscape studies, issues of social complexity, and various communities linked to mobile pastoralism in the Near East and Central Eurasia, with over 20 years of field experience. Her PhD and postgraduate research has primarily focused on arid southern Central Asia during the Bronze and Iron Ages (roughly 2500-1000 BCE).

Since 2022, Dr. Rouse is co-directing the Kimirek-Kum Archaeological Project (in collaboration with J. K. Mirzaakhmedov/Samarqand Institute of Archaeology and S. Stark/ISAW), focusing on early land use and occupation in a now-dry branch of the lower Zerafshan Delta, in the Kyzyl-kum Desert in central Uzbekistan. She is also the director of The Project for the Ancient Murghab (PAM), an ongoing interdisciplinary archaeological project focusing on the reconstruction of prehistoric social and environmental landscapes in south-central Turkmenistan. From 2010-2019, Dr. Rouse was involved with the joint Italian-Turkmen-Russian Archaeological Map of the Murghab Delta (AMMD) project and the related Togolok Archaeological Project (TAP). She was the lead landscape archaeologist for the Margins or Nodes Project from 2018-2021, helping to investigate the role of ancient mountain communities in Kyrgyzstan in the incipient process of food globalization. Her previous research has also involved collaboration with archaeologists studying ancient metallurgy and agricultural organization in the Faynan (Feinan) region in Jordan.

Dr. Rouse is currently a Research Fellow at the Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, Eurasien-Abteilung, and maintains a research affiliation with Washington University in St. Louis. Her archaeological research has been sponsored by fellowships from the Volkswagen Foundation (2016-2017), the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (2017-2020), the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft) (2021-2025), and the Gerda Henkel Foundation (2023-2025).

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