As the world's largest contiguous landmass, Eurasia is of outstanding historical significance and whose contacts continually have relied on traffic routes typically running East-West. This is the region where the world saw its first agricultural civilisations and earliest states emerge, and where nomadic communities too, shaped the historical dynamics over millennia. However, in terms of archaeology, Eurasia yet in many ways remains terra incognita.

But it is precisely this territorial vastness that epitomises the uniqueness of the opportunities for investigating the dynamics of interaction between social processes, or forms of organisation, and technical innovations in the early cultures of the double continent in an archaeologically intelligible manner. It furthermore presents exceptional possibilities for exploring (pre)historical processes in chronological and spatial contexts. This opens perspectives for long-term investigation programmes on climate change and environmental issues, but also on their consequences for human communities.

Archaeological surveys and excavations are first of all aimed at case-related studies only. However, medium- and long-term research projects in the host countries may for instance contribute to setting up larger chronological sequences, elucidating population dynamics within settlement areas, and even to comprehensive reconstructions of ancient landscapes. Whilst only just fully unknown cultures have thus been revealed in recent years, seemingly long-confirmed historical geographies now require to be rewritten.

Though not all, most of the technological and social transformations in prehistory and early history had consequences for large parts of Eurasia. Compared to the other continents, a distinctive characteristic of the technical innovations in Eurasia is that these spread over vast areas of the continent in relatively rapid knowledge transfers. This was undeniably also related to the distinct forms of mobile subsistence that had emerged in the steppes towards the end of the 4^th millennium BC. Already then, Eurasia underwent a period marked by an intense exchange of ideas and technology, which laid the groundwork for technological developments thus shaping people's everyday life all the way to the onset of modern industry in the 19^th century.

Innovations are not limited only to the moda operandi in crafts and technology, but they likewise involve new forms of social organisation and symbol systems. The concept of innovation is therefore not restricted to technology only, but furthermore applies to the description of social and religious systems. However diverse different theoretical perceptions and methodological approaches in culture-oriented history of technology may be, they nonetheless accept that the function of tools not merely hinges on technological criteria, but that it moreover responds to social and symbolic standards. Techniques, in other words, are reflections of ways of thinking.

Both the technological and the social innovation and diffusion processes are fundamental questions examined in research carried out by the Eurasia Department. These issues are ubiquitous, be they related to the spread of agricultural subsistence (Aşagi Pinar, Aruchlo, 'Kura in Montion', Japan), metallurgical knowhow (Pietrele, Gonurdepe, ARCHCAUCASUS, Tel Tsaf, Baraba-Steppe/Tartas 1), the dissemination of ideas during the Greek colonisation of the northern Black Sea region (Taman'), the later Hellenization of Central Asia (Torbulok), or to interactions between steppe communities and central state strongholds (Taman', hoards finds in Western Georgia, Tappe Rivi, Gonur, Silk Road Fashion, Vojtenki).

EA focal point of the department's current research pertains to the swift knowledge transfer in the 4^th millennium BC, a project carried out in close collaboration with researchers from the natural sciences (Bioarchaeology in the Caucasus, ARCHCAUCASUS)).