Given the geographical focus of this volume and the theme of this section, it might be logical to discuss the societies of Central Asia and the Eurasian steppe as peripheral to the growth of Near Eastern empires from the 3rd to 2nd millennia BC. However, in this chapter we temporarily reorient the focus to investigate tangible ways in which innovations and extensive networks formed by societies of Central Asia and the Eurasian steppe (Figure 36.1) impacted the rapid-pace changes in political economy in the Near East during the late 3rd and 2nd millennium BC. In doing so, this chapter situates our view of Near Eastern empires and states within a wider and more complex arena of economic, political, and social interaction across Asia in the Bronze Age (Possehl 2007). From roughly 2500 to 1500 BC, proto-urban communities of Central Asia and mobile pastoralists of the Eurasian steppe emerged as integral agents in the growth of a wide network of interactions that bridged the Far East and southwest Asia, millennia before the historically known Silk Road. From the 3rd millennium BC onward, innovations from the Eurasian steppe and Central Asia found their way into the cultures of the greater Near East; whether recognized as equiddrawn war carts depicted on the royal standard of Ur (2600 BC),“intercultural style” vessels at Susa transported by Elamite traders (c. 2500 BC), or semi-precious stones and materials extracted from far across Inner Asia and worked into burial adornments of Ur III rulers (2100–2000 BC). To be sure, the city-states and