Introduction

Baluchistan is a huge landmass that extends from western Pakistan into southeastern Iran and southern Afghanistan and separates the open alluvial plains of the Indian subcontinent from the Iranian Plateau (Figure 1). It is the largest part of the Indo-Iranian borderlands which also include parts of the NorthWest Frontier Province, Kandahar, and Hilmand Provinces in Afghanistan, and Sistan/Baluchistan in Iran.

These regions formed, at times, a cultural landscape linked through traits such as architecture and artifact styles, interpreted as evidence for exchange, shared technologies, values, and ideas.

In Baluchistan, human development from the seventh millennium BC onwards, from mobile food hunters and gatherers to sedentary communities based on farming and animal husbandry, has been uncovered. Increasing levels of complexity in economy and technology, social and political organization, accompanied by a population growth and settlement expansion, fostered the development of villages, towns, and cities and provided the basis for urbanization and state formation. Throughout, this tradition maintained a distinctive character, notwithstanding regional differences and changing patterns of interaction.

The purpose of this paper is to outline this development, with a focus on Baluchistan. In order to understand the preconditions and to assess its role, we will first discuss the natural conditions that govern human life and then look at the cultural communities that formed the conceptual landscape.