With the main purpose of a comprehensive historical and archaeological knowledge and understanding of ancient Mediterranean cultures, in 2006 the ERAAUB team started a new research line to evaluate, from a broader chrono-spatial framework, those historical processes that occurred in parallel in large areas spanning from the western Mediterranean to Central Asia. As an example, it should be noted that the introduction of agriculture and animal domestication, originated in the Middle East, spread simultaneously in the Iberian Peninsula and Central Asia; migration of Indo-Aryans of northern Black Sea brought the same family of languages (Celtic) in both regions, which were integrated into large networks of trade and cultural exchange from the Bronze Age; after the arrival of Alexander the Great in Central Asia, both territories were under Greek cultural influence, while Islam spread in the two regions in parallel. In order to understand the Mediterranean as a zone consistently integrated into a comprehensive spatial framework, the team has developed an important research line focused on the study of past complex societies living in the historical region of Bactria (Central Asia). This territory was connected with many other Eurasian regions by the Silk Road, which linked the Eurasian steppes to the Indian subcontinent and the Mediterranean with China. Therefore, it has witnessed an important cultural exchange between sedentary populations, nomadic and semi-nomadic ethnic groups, also promoted by major migration processes of Indo-Aryan, Iranian, Greek Macedonians, Turks, Mongols and Semites. Specifically, the investigation performed by the team aims at proposing a new historical and archaeological perspective on the various socio-economic realities (sedentary agricultural communities and the nomadic and semi-nomadic herders of the steppes) that coexisted in ancient Bactria from the Bronze Age to the Islamic period and formed great historical-cultural entities (Oxus Bronze Age Cultural Complex, Achaemenid Empire, Hellenistic, Seleucid, Greco-Bactrian, nomadic Yuezhi, Kushan, Kushano-Sasanian and Islamic). Three main branches of the research are developed in parallel:
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