The Rise of the Urban Culture in Gandhara (c. 1400–145 BCE) and the Edge Paradigm

This contribution provides an overview of the urban processes that took place in the ancient region of Gandhara at the beginning of the so-called Early Historic period, from about the sixth–fifth centuries BCE, with a brief preamble on the proto-urban phase. The mid-late second century BCE, marked by the (re)foundation of cities and the remarkable financial investment of the Indo-Greeks in cities and urban resources, is here taken as watershed in the urban history of Gandhara. The early urban history of Gandhara is narrated by foregrounding the notion of edge as tie and interface. The attempt is to highlight, on the one hand, how the relationality entailed in exchanges and tensions between the macro-regions of South Asia and the Iranian Highland structured the transformations of the urban and urbanity and, on the other hand, how Gandhara, the edge, progressively gained centrality and agency on the functioning of the bordering areas and in reconfiguring the wider socio-cultural and economic network.