'Crossroads' of the Bronze Age

In a groundbreaking collaborative project with Soviet archaeologists, University scholars are hoping to unlock ancient secrets in a country that until recently was closed to Western experts.

This fall, Professor of Anthropology C.C. Lamberg-Karlovsky and Ahmed Ali Askarov, vice president of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, plan to excavate a site in the Ferghana Valley in the Republic of Tadzhikistan.

The valley in the southwest corner of the Soviet Union "had been closed to Western archaeologists since the revolution [in 1917]," says Lamberg-Karlovsky.

Lamberg-Karlovsky's excavation is just one of a number of research sites in the Soviet Union that appear to indicate the existence of an ancient civilization equal in complexity to those found in the Indus Valley, Mesopotamia, Egypt and China--considered the four centers of Bronze Age culture.

Scholars theorize that the civilization being investigated, called Bactrian, may have been a "crossroads" on the Silk Road between China and Mesopotamia.

"We suspect that given the evidence of this urban Bronze Age that we know already to have some connections with the Indus Vally civilization and Mesopotamia, it is not unreasonable to think that it may have had a linkage further to the east in China," says Lamberg-Karlovsky.

At this point, archaeological evidence supporting his thesis is scarce. But several clues hint at a possible connection. "One of the excavations recovered silk at 1800 B.C.," says the anthropoligist. "It's a small fragment, but it's there."

If the expected success of the joint excavation is as complete as predicted, one of the most difficult questions in archaeology and anthropology could be resolved, scholars say.

"It is one of the great pieces of the puzzle, one archaeologists have been looking for for decades--how to connect these two cultures to each other," says Fredrik T. Hiebert '86, a graduate student studying under Lamberg-Karlovsky.

In addition to providing innovative scholarship, the five-year-old joint project may also foreshadow future collaborative efforts between scholars of the two nations.

"We hope in the future we will be able to work with American archaeologists. This is very important," says Anatoly Derevyanko, one of the visiting Soviet scholars.