Editorial

7 Editorial The present monothematic volume of Studia Hercynia, tying in with the previous issue, presents the proceedings of the Third Meeting of the Hellenistic Central Asia Research Network (HCARN), organized under the title Seen from Oxyartes’ Rock: Central Asia under and after Alexander on the 14th–16th of November 2018 at Charles University in Prague. As suggested by atitle that symbolically employs the name of the Bactrian/Sogdian nobleman and father of Alexander’swife Roxane, the main focus of the conference was the local point of view and the issue of how the peoples of Central Asia experienced the turbulent developments related to Alexander’scampaign and the arrival of new overlords from the Mediterranean. Once again, the HCARN conference brought together archaeologists, historians, and numismatists working on various aspects of Hellenistic Central Asia in abroad chronological and territorial context. In total, 29 talks were delivered by 34 active participants from 12 countries, addressing various issues of mutual interaction between the local populations and newcomers and transformations of both society and material culture. The organizing committee consisted of Ladislav Stančo (Charles University), Gunvor Lindström (German Archaeological Institute), and Rachel Mairs (University of Reading). From the very beginning we had planned afinal publication of the proceedings, the best platform for which turned out to be Studia Hercynia, the periodical of the Institute of Classical Archaeology, the institution which took patronage over the organization of the third HCARN meeting as well. All of the 13 contributions submitted by the authors were subject to two double -blind reviews. Considering their extent and diversity of approaches, we decided to split these papers into two volumes. The first volume, issued in October 2021, we consider historical, since it contains seven texts dealing mostly with written sources. This second volume brings together papers that approach the conference topic from an archaeological perspective. The final selection of papers conveniently covers abroad spread of the area and period of interest. South of Hindukush,M.A. Shah and A. R. Lone present an elaborated overview of the data on the Indo -Greek site of Semthan in the Kashmir Valley, India, while O. Coloru, E. Iori, and L.M. Olivieri evaluate the post -Hellenistic developments in the Swat Valley, Pakistan. The regions to the north of the mountains, in present -day Af - ghanistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan are in one way or another subject to investigation in four other papers. J. Havlík on the one hand offers an analysis of the settlement patterns in Bactria, V. Mokroborodov and L. Stančo focus in their contributions on the micro -regions of the Pashkhurt Valley, and the Darband Wall area respectively. K. Junker, for her part, aims at illuminating the issue of the presumed Greek influence on the local pottery production of the period in question. The conference was kindly supported by the European Regional Development Fund project ‘Creativity and Adaptability as Conditions of the Success of Europe in an Interrelated World’ (reg. no.: CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/16_019/0000734). The proceedings were published thanks to the Faculty of Arts, Charles University program Progress 9 ’History, Key for Understanding the Globalised World’. Finally, we would like to express our gratitude to all the anonymous reviewers who substantially helped to improve the individual papers of the volume, and also to the staff of the Faculty of Arts Press for their support and patience. Now, having finished the obligations towards the third meeting of HCARN, we are looking forward to the fourth one, which is going to take place after the long two years of forced delay– filled with the most 8STUDIA HERCYNIA XXV/2 inspiring HCARN online lecture series– in March 2022 in Freiburg, Germany, under the title ‘Entangled Pasts and Presents: Temporal Interactions and Knowledge Production in the Study of Hellenistic Central Asia.’ The topic of these proceedings was particularly dear to Edvard Vasilevich Rtveladze. We would like to dedicate this volume to the memory of the great scholar who left us a few weeks ago. The Editors