Die Landwirtschaft der arischen Völker aus der frühen Eisenzeit: Tiere und Menschen im vorachämenidischen Mittelasien1

The Iranian peoples, or Aryans as they called themselves, are the indisputable characters of the last millennium of the history of the Ancient Near East. How they began to take part in the history of Central Asia to become some of the most eminent rulers of Late Antiquity, is still difficult to follow today. Our intention in this paper is to collect the work on this subject of Soviet scholars and relate it with those carried out by archaeologists from different countries in cooperation with the Central Asian republics, particularly with our research within the frame- work of the Turkmen-Spanish archaeological Mission in Dahistan (Southwestern Turkmenistan). Through archaeological data, as well as through written sources, we will focus on the faunas that lived with these people, and put them in connection with the re-writing of the history of the so- called Median Empire.