Indus-Aegean Bronze Age Research Network (IABARN)

IABARN arose out of the First International Workshop on Relations between the Indus and the Aegean in the Bronze Age, convened by Professor Robert Arnott (Green Templeton College) and Dr Marie Nicole Pareja (University of Pennsylvania) at the University of Oxford on 3-4 December 2022, where all the participants agreed to establish the Indus-Aegean Bronze Age Research Network to continue the dialogue and to promote collaborative research.

The first contacts between India and the Aegean were thought to have occurred at the beginning of the sixth century BC. There is now, however, growing evidence of much earlier but indirect exchange, reaching back through prehistory. Such connections grew from ties between the Indus Civilisation (Meluḫḫa) and the Near East, and then expanded to the societies of the Early and Middle Bronze Age Aegean, including the shores of Western Anatolia, with their slowly emerging palace-based economies and complex social structures.

Led by Professor Arnott and Dr Pareja, IABARN has established an e-mail based information distribution (indaegeanet@gmail.com), and will shortly establish a website and a virtual seminar series. It is anticipated that the Second Workshop will again be held at the University of Oxford in the autumn of 2024, which will also commemorate the centenary of the announcement of the discovery of the Indus Civilisation by Sir John Marshall, at the time Director-General of Archaeology in India, based on the work of his Indian colleagues, R. B. Daya Ram Sahni at Harappa and Rakhal Das Banerjee and Madhu Sarup Vats at Mohenjo-daro.

Further details of the Workshop and the Indus-Aegean Bronze Age Research Network that was established can be obtained from Professor Arnott at robert.arnott@gtc.ox.ac.uk.