Terracotta plastic of the ancient states of Central Asia of the 4th century BC - IV century. AD

Terracotta plastic is one of the most striking phenomena in the material culture of the ancient historical and cultural regions of Central Asia. For more than a hundred -year period, since the beginning of archaeological research in the region, hundreds of books, dissertations and articles were devoted to her. A detailed consideration of the entire volume of literature has shown that the tradition of studying terracotta plastic products uses mainly art history methods. The main attention of researchers is focused on the issues of iconography and interpretation of the fine series. As a result, there was a lot of non -oversteping points of view on various aspects of history reflected in terracotta. The book professionally solved the task of translating terracotta plastic as mass archaeological material in the field of archaeological sources and proven the need to use an integrated approach in its study. The basis for work was the data collected by the author on more than 1200 products of four adjacent regions: Bactria, Sogd, Margiana and Khorezm. The selected materials have a clear archaeological context and dating and serve as a reliable base for a comprehensive, including statistical, analysis