[ silence ]
Hirad Dinavari: I would like to thank you all
for attending this lecture.
I'm Hirad Dinavari, Reference Librarian
for the Iranian World Collections here at LC, Near East Section.
The Africa/Middle East is a division of three sections:
Hebraic, Near East, and Africa.
And in the Near East we have many subsections.
Without taking much time since we only have an hour,
I would like to give you a little background on Dr. Fredrik Hiebert,
his biography, and have him start his talk.
Dr. Fredrik Hiebert, Archaeologist and Curator,
has traced ancient trade routes over land and across the seas for more
than 20 years, his last excavations were
at ancient Silk Road sites from Egypt to Mongolia.
His discoveries in Turkmenistan
at the 4,000-year-old city along the Silk Road made headlines
around the world in 2001.
Dr. Hiebert completed his doctoral dissertation
at Harvard University in 1992.
He was Assistant Curator for the Old World Archaeology
at Harvard University's Peabody Museum from 1993 to 1996.
He held the Robert H. Dyson Endowment Chair
of Near Eastern Archaeology at the University of Pennsylvania
from 1996 till 2003 when he joined the National Geographic Society.
Dr. Hiebert assisted in the 2004 inventory, The Hidden Collections
of the National Museum of Afghanistan in Kabul,
including The Bactrian Gold, and is the Curator of the exhibition,
"Afghanistan: Hidden Treasures from the National Museum, Kabul,"
which is on tour right now in the United States
and at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. until September,
and then goes on a nationwide tour until June, 2009.
As National Geographic's Archaeology Fellow, he brings the excitement
of archaeology to the public through lectures, presentations,
film, and museum exhibits.
Dr. Hiebert also holds research positions with the University
of Pennsylvania's Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology,
the Institute for Nautical Archaeology,
and Robert Ballard's Institute for Exploration.
Dr. Hiebert received the Chairman's Award
for the National Geographic Committee for Research
and Exploration in 1998, and Dr. Hiebert also is the Director
of Ancient Cultures of the Turkmenistan Project,
sponsored by the National Geographic in cooperation with the Ministry
of Culture of Turkmenistan.   The list goes on.
I also would like to say that Dr. Hiebert is an author,
has written four books, fantastic books on Central Asia
and the larger Near East.
And I would just like to say, I'm delighted that he's here to share
with us his vast knowledge of the region
in greater Central Asia and West Asia.
During my personal numerous visits
to this historic groundbreaking exhibit on Afghanistan
at the National Gallery, I always went there with a number of friends,
and a number of people had questions, "Who are the Bactrians?
Sogdians? Scythians?   Kushans?" et cetera, et cetera.
Therefore, before we start, I asked Dr. Hiebert to include
in his talk some background on these empires and how they fit
into the larger region linguistically,
cultural, and historically.
Also, seeing the exhibit with all the objects, we were made aware
of the rich Indic-Indian
and Greco-Roman artistic aesthetic visible in the objects.
Are there any other native or Iranian artistic and cultural trades
or motifs that are also present and common
to these various Iranian speaking peoples and empires?
Or was the artistic aesthetic more influenced
by the stronger regional cultural spheres that bordered this area?
Without taking any further time,
I turn this over to our distinguished guest, Dr. Hiebert.
Thank you.   [applause]
Fredrik Hiebert: Thank you very much.
Thank you, Hirad, especially for challenging me
with such an interesting idea for a talk
because usually I give the background
to how the collections were found and how they were saved.
And so, this is a real pleasure for me to address a different topic,
which I love as an archaeologist,
which is the really deep history of Central Asia.
And so, in putting this together,
I went through my archaeological resources.
I'm an archaeologist, not a linguist,
so I will address it primarily from an archaeological point of view.
And I realize that I ended up having such a large group of topics
and images to tell you about that I'm afraid I'm going to go
through a lot of pictures because I kept adding more
and more important things that just couldn't be left out.
So I will try to do this as concisely as possible.
But I wanted to back up.
As a prehistoric archaeologist, you know,
one of the most interesting areas of the world is Horasan.
So it's an area which today
by modern boundaries is actually divided between three countries,
Iran, Turkmenistan, and Afghanistan.   And here you see it on the map.
I hope you can see it.   Can you see it?
Male Speaker: Yep.
Fredrik Hiebert: Oh, good, great, just checking.
And it's an area which is extremely challenging
for an American archaeologist to work in.
But beginning in the 1980s I did have a chance to work primarily
in Turkmenistan, later actually having a chance to work
with the museum collections in Afghanistan,
and then most recently just having a quick -- several visits to Iran,
to Horasan, Iranian Horasan.
And I think it is amazing that we are able
to actually address these areas archaeologically.
And I want to go through the prehistory and the history
of the area relatively rapidly in terms of what the archaeology says
about that, and then just end with some questions
about what these countries are doing for archaeology in the area.
So here's a map of some of the earliest sites in the area shared
between Iran and Turkmenistan border.
I showed this set of sites here.
These are sites that are the earliest sedentary sites
in the area.
The question of the origins of civilization
in this area actually is addressed by a series
of almost 20 archaeological sites that are as early as some
of the earliest agricultural sites
in Mesopotamia, in India, and in Egypt.
In particular, the site of Anau in the north in Turkmenistan,
Jaitun which is also in Turkmenistan, they have evidence
of very, very early agriculture, as much as 7,000 years ago,
radiocarbon dates going back 5500 B.C. And what it is, is it's an area
which borders between the Iranian Plateau
and the deserts, the foothill region.
It's an area of landscape which is shared with Mesopotamia
as being sort of the perfect area for early agriculture.
And we find that this area, which doesn't usually make it
into the textbooks, actually is an area of early civilization.
Now, when I first when to Turkmenistan it was in the '80s.
And then by the '90s and beginning in the 21st century we were dealing
with Turkmenbashi Era, and this is what you see there,
and it was an exceptional opportunity.
I thought, "Wow, I must be the only American archaeologist
to be able to go to this area."
But very soon I found out that I was not.
I was told by local Turkmens
that actually there was another American archaeologist
who they remembered had been there,
and it turned out that was 1904, Raphael Pumpelly.
There he is with his wife, on horseback in Turkmenistan.
And he ended up excavating a site called Tepe Anau in Turkmenistan,
where I ended up excavating it, as well.
And that's his camp in Turkmenistan at the site of Anau.
And it was there he looked at a section cut
by actually a Russian general through one of the mounds,
that he decided that Turkmenistan, northern Afghanistan,
and northern Iran was definitely a center of civilization.
You can imagine that in 1904 that was a completely radical idea.
That was so far from Greece, and Rome, and so far from Egypt
that 99 percent of scholars dismissed it as impossible.
But he was convinced that this was true.
In the early 2000s, I returned to exactly the same site,
and did a restudy of that particular mound, and in it was able
to find a type of painted pottery, which we could find in stratigraphy
and radiocarbon date to some 7,000 years ago.
And one of the most important discoveries in the area
as we sifted the soil through this area was
that in the earliest levels we found domesticated bread wheat
and domesticated animals, which is really quite astonishing
because it's a spread of early agriculture which is on par
with that of Mesopotamia, on par with the Indus Civilization,
and here it is in Horasan in Central Asia shared between Northern Iran,
Turkmenistan, and Northern Afghanistan.
That early civilization gave rise to a series of cities that developed
over the next several thousand years that astonished archaeologists.
Raphael Pumpelly in 1904 didn't even know what he had stumbled on.
And during the Soviet Period, especially in the 1950s and '60s,
Soviet archaeologists worked primarily in the southern area
of Turkmenistan near the modern City of Mari [spelled phonetically],
in Uzbekistan near Samarkand, and later in the 1970s and '80s
in Northern Afghanistan, discovering a Bronze Age Civilization some 4,000
years old with urbanism and metal technology which was of a level
which really astonished us all.
And the man who almost single-handedly discovered this is a
guy named Victor Sarianidi, who ended up being my first mentor
in field archaeology in Turkmenistan,
and who bravely accepted having a young American archaeologist
on his dig when almost nobody --
in 1986 through the early '90s nobody was interested
in having an American in that southern part of the area.
And he took me out into the deserts of Turkmenistan
and here he showed me excavations that were little reported
in the West, but in the Soviet literature we began
to become familiar with a series of really huge archaeological sites
that were excavated in the Soviet style,
complete 100 percent excavations.
Here you see a site fortified, about the size of two football fields.
Here's the plan, very regular architecture.
At first Victor thought this must be a special temple
or a special palace.
It was absolutely unparalleled in other parts of the world,
but little did he know that he would find this throughout the area.
And he continues to excavate these areas,
large fortified monumental architecture
of a style completely separate from Mesopotamia, or from India,
or from China at this time, a separate civilization
that we today call the Oxus Civilization
in this area of Horasan.
This is the site of Gonur Tepe, actually where I ended
up doing my dissertation research in the late '80s.
This is even bigger than the previous site.
This is, I think, about 200 meters on a side,
an amazing fortified archaeological complex that we find
in Northern Afghanistan, Northern Iran, and Southern Turkmenistan.
In fact, as we were able to start mapping out these sites,
we found that there were dozens and dozens of these sites in this area.
And this is the pattern of those large fortified sites north
of the City of Mari out in the desert.
It must have been in a fertile country, really quite amazing
that there was such a density.
And literally up through the '90s it was unknown in the West.
It was only through a few scholars,
who were reading the archaeological literature, and began to trickle
into the Soviet Union, and then
into the newly independent Stans [spelled phonetically],
that we began really to understand what the full impact
of this Oxus Civilization was.
Here is just part of one of the palatial complexes, this, again,
4,000 years old, people standing where columns would have been;
and then, by 2003, 2004, a series of really spectacular finds made
by Victor Sarianidi, and here a series of mosaics made of ivory,
of a sort that we had absolutely no idea about, that these were found
in the deserts of Turkmenistan, very similar to what could be found
in Northern Iran and Northern Afghanistan.
Out in the deserts of Turkmenistan there is no metal resources,
there's no stone resources, we're out in a big desert fan,
and all of the stones in the area, and all -- here is a stone ingot --
a stone mold and a copper ingot, which had been imported
into the area to create an original art
in the desert called the Oxus art style.
It even had a series of tokens that may be a form
of accounting, a form of proto-writing.
To this day, we don't have any firm evidence of writing
for this particular civilization.
I have no doubt from my own excavations
that someday we will find a separate writing system in this area.
It's just a matter that this is a very,
very new discovery in the area.
Here's some of the sculpture that is found in the area.
These are composite statues.
Again, 4,000 years, found in Northern Afghanistan,
recently new finds have been made in Northern Iran near Nishapur
and are frequently found
in Turkmenistan dated to this civilization.
Previously, these were all associated
with other cultures inappropriately, and now we find
that their home is here in Horasan.
There are [unintelligible] for accounting
where cylinder seals have been rolled over seals.
These were found at Gonur Tepe and Turkmenistan,
a whole art style in glyptic art in seals.
This is just a couple of examples of literally thousands of seals
that were used to stamp and put on commodities in the civilization
that has just recently been uncovered from 4,000 years ago
in the deserts of this area, very fine craftsmanship, and again,
all of the metalwork being brought in and crafted in these desert oasis
in Central Asia well-preceding the Bactrians,
well-preceding the Kushans in this area.
In 2004, Victor made an amazing discovery in the deserts
of Turkmenistan, a pretty much intact cemetery near Gonur
with literally thousands of burials, chambered burials with ceramics,
with skeletons, with all of these finds intact.
Some of the burials were quite unusual.
Instead of finding humans in the burials,
the humans were replaced with animals.
In other cases there were humans, often with very fine ceramics,
and with these fine glyptics [spelled phonetically] seals metal
works that we found in the excavations.
These are the ancient Oxus people.
Here's a particularly interesting find,
a new find made two years ago at Gonur.
It's a chariot burial, perhaps relations with the step populations
to the north and, even the potential of interaction
between Indo-European speakers
and southern perhaps more ancient Near Eastern speaking peoples,
a real Nexus of people across Asia.
These are my excavations in the area.
American archaeologists have a very different style.
We like to dig down rather than out.   It's completely a different style.
At first it was sort of a little bit of rough relations
between the Americans and the Russians, but we put it together
because we realized that we had completely
complementary information.
And from this deep stratigraphic excavation we first got a
radiocarbon chronology for the area, but we were also able
to identify what the ancient environment was
like 4,000 years ago.
Of course, the area today is desertic.
But back 4,000 years ago, we imagine that it was a large oasis,
large irrigated oasis, with fortified buildings,
with wheat fields, and barley fields, and domestic animals,
it would have been a manmade oasis
that the ancient Oxus Civilization put together.
And that's how we reconstruct what this modern desertic environment
must have looked like 4,000 years ago.
It's quite in contrast to the modern environment.
We're going to step back from that a little bit.
We're going to go back to Anau --
we were out at Gonur way out in the desert --
back to Anau to look at near the foothills of Turkmenistan and Iran.
The archaeological sites are very different.
Instead of being widespread like that, they're mounded.
So these are the excavations.
You actually see here in this satellite image, you see a couple
of old rounded holes, so those are Raphael Pumpelly's excavations.
And the modern squares are actually our modern excavations.
And what we are doing here is we're doing more stratigraphic work,
going down to see if we can connect that Oxus Civilization,
the Bronze Age Civilization of 4,000 years ago,
with the earlier excavations, I mean with the earlier settlements
of the first settlers in the area.
And so, we're -- dig down every year,
it's just excavating further down and further down.
As you can see, this is how we excavate down.
Actually, in the back you can see Raphael Pumpelly's excavations.
And finally in our lowest levels where we ended two years ago,
we're finding here the transition between the unpainted pottery
of the Oxus Civilization and the painted pottery
of the first settlers in this area.
We find that in this area of Turkmenistan, Afghanistan,
and Northern Iran that we have evidence through archeology
of our continuous occupation from some 7,000 years ago
with the first villages right up through the development
of these massive fortified settlements called the
Oxus Civilization.
So right here in Horasan we have evidence
of continuous occupation from 7,000 years ago.
It's really quite a remarkable record.
We're going to fast-forward.
You have to imagine that the Oxus Civilization is a Bronze Age
Civilization towards the end of the Bronze Age in Northern Afghanistan,
which would later -- and Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan --
which would later be known as Bactria.
We have a change in civilization.
The Oxus Civilization came to an end.
It's a very mysterious time for archaeology.
We have very little archaeological evidence of what happened.
One of the things that I don't have slides to show you of today is
that there's likely a dispersion of northern populations to the south,
to Afghanistan, and the Indus Valley, and to the Iranian plateau.
It may be the spread of Indo-Iranian languages, Indo-Iranian peoples.
But what we have after that is the resumption
of archaeological evidence with the Persian Empire, and it's a fact both
in Afghanistan, in Iran, and Turkmenistan.
So from here I want to switch to the archaeology of Afghanistan
and take us to the time of King Zahir Shah in the 1960s.
King Zahir Shah, the leader of Afghanistan,
was actually a very learned person.
And he always kept a stack of National Geographics on his desk.
I kind of liked that.
He invited National Geographic to photograph him
in his office in the 1950s.
And he made sure that, that stack was right there in front.
So he liked to think that he was extremely educated.
When he was on a hunting trip in 1961 he came
across an archaeological find
that people have been waiting almost 100 years to find,
and that was the first evidence
of any tangible evidence of the Greco-Bactrians.
We had a lot of coins.
We had a lot of historical documents talking about the Greco Bactrian,
but we didn't have any settlements.   But it was in Northern Afghanistan
that King Zahir Shah found a capitol of a column.
And he recognized it as being something very special,
and he invited French archaeologists to come and look.
And they came to the site of Ai Khanum in Northern Afghanistan,
right on the Amu Darya, right on the Oxus River, and here you see it.
It looks like a series of sand dunes but it's not sand dunes.
Those things in the front are towers on a citadel,
and in the background you see the remnants of one
of the cities founded by the generals of Alexander the Great.
And it's here that French archaeologists through the '60s
into the '70s excavated one
of the first Greco-Bactrian cities ever found in Northern Afghanistan.
An incredible find, this site of Ai Khanum excavated primarily
by Paul Bernard showed us what happened when the richness
of Horasan is identified by its neighbors.
People come and take over it, and here we see that,
and it's really quite amazing.
Here's one of those capitols like King Zahir Shah found,
a typical Greek type capitol,
but made in a local stone in a local style.
Here you see the one that we actually have on display
at the National Gallery of Art.
It's a magnificent piece but all local stone -- oops, sorry, that --
don't know what happened to that.
We have a series of mosaics that are typical of sort of the finer houses
of the Hellenistic world.
This from Ai Khanum is exactly typical of Greek architecture.
We have anifexes [spelled phonetically].
We have a series of these on display at the National Gallery, as well,
showing that the local population absorbed the Hellenistic motifs
of art and architecture into their own local style.
It's something that we see is a pattern, especially in Afghanistan,
in the building and creation of local Afghan art, the incorporation
of little pieces of other people's tradition as they come into areas.
And those traditions maintain themselves and get handed
down creating a unique Horasani [spelled phonetically]
or a unique Central Asian Silk Road art.
Including an accounting system based on Greek --
different types of systems of accounting here we have on display,
it was a special amphora that was used to sort coins into.
They only wanted the Greco-Bactrian coins in this particular ones,
because the silver of Indian coins at that time was less pure.
And so, they only wanted the Greek coins in these jars
in the treasury at Ai Khanum.
Paul Bernard and his architect have done an incredible job
of reconstructing what this city would have looked
like in Northern Afghanistan in the third century B.C.
In the National Gallery you actually see a 3D reconstruction
of Ai Khanum.
But it had a theater, it had a gymnasium, all the aspects
of Hellenism brought to Northern Afghanistan and becoming part
of the fabric of Afghan life, and art, and architecture.
Here in the temple, which you see in the foreground,
they found perhaps the most astonishing artifact
which is this plaque called the Civil Plaque,
which was probably not made in Northern Afghanistan.
This is when the few pieces of sort of fusion art that was brought
in as sort of both Syrian, and Persian,
and Hellenistic at the same time.
We think it was probably brought in, perhaps by the armies
of Alexander the Great, as a template, sort of, of the worldview
of what Hellenism was supposed to bring
to this furthest colony out in Afghanistan.
It's a marvelous piece, one of the pieces
that we thought surely was stolen from the Kabul Museum.
Again, it's on display at the National Gallery of Art,
saved in the collections there.   Unfortunately, the site itself --
sorry, but you'll just have to imagine a little bit --
but the site became -- the site of Ai Khanum was taken over as one
of the command posts during the Mahajadin [spelled
phonetically] Period.
And during the Northern Alliance it became the base
of Masud [spelled phonetically].
It became a literal mining ground for people.
The entire site is looted.   It looks like a lunar landscape.
It's one of the tragedies of having 25 years of war in Afghanistan is
that the extent sites have suffered greatly,
and Ai Khanum unfortunately is pretty much totally destroyed.
Yet when we map out the maps that --
the archaeological sites of Afghanistan,
we see actually a good news story.
There are more than 1,500 X-tent archaeological sites in Afghanistan.
It's an amazing set of archaeological sites that date
from as far back as 7000 years ago right up through the Islamic period.
The major period, however, and the period that we focus
on in the exhibition is the period of when Afghanistan, Turkmenistan,
and Northern Iran were really at the center of the Silk Road.
And we have one specific collection, one specific excavation that sort
of highlights that, and that is the site of Begram found
by the French archaeologist Joseph Hackin in 1937.
He was actually looking for a palace of Kushan kings, but instead,
I believe that he actually found something
which was even more exceptional, a merchant storeroom.
He found two rooms -- these being his original field documents,
you can see these documents translated for you on the wall
at the National Gallery --
being bricked up storerooms that a merchant had 2000 years ago full
of goods ready to be transported north and south, and east
and west along the Silk Road, this being one room,
this being another room, those sort
of rectangular things being ivory chairs
that were absolutely eloquently carved and ready for transport.
We thought these were all lost, stolen,
destroyed during the civil war.
You know, the museum was bombed in Afghanistan, it was looted,
the statues in the museum were smashed by the Taliban
at the same time that the giant Buddhas
of Bamiyan were smashed, were exploded.
So it was a great news story for us when we could actually find
that the boxes in the Kabul Museum were saved.
And show you just a few of these objects which are on display, here,
a wonderful bronze tray with a Medusa and fish that have fins
that wiggle when you pour water on the top.
It's great.
You can see it at the National Gallery.
It was probably just an amusement.
A whole series of plaster medallions whose closest parallels are
from the Crimea in the Black Sea,
probably these were plaster medallions that were used
to create metalwork, silverwork as models for artists.
Here's another one called the Podum [spelled phonetically] of Begram.
It's really quite a wonderful piece.   We don't actually know what it is.
But a series of ivory such as this water goddess,
we had seen on the internet, from Interpol, from UNESCO,
from Archaeology Magazine, this was a piece that was lost, stolen.
It was highlighted, you know.   This has gone from the Kabul Museum.
We found it in these boxes hidden away in Afghanistan,
a great news story telling us about the importance
of this area in Afghan history.
They went through restoration in France,
and here you can see the French restorers who had taken care
of these pieces, being very carefully, probably, I don't know,
15 to 20 conservators working
on these pieces getting the entire collection of 220 objects ready
for international exhibition, including --
and I'm particularly happy with this --
a whole series of Afghan conservators who were taken
to France, who are here in the U.S.,
who are getting trained in modern conservation.
All right, so we'll move on.
As I said, we're going through the history of what this area
of Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, and Iran means in the past.
Moving on to the next period to see where we go,
we'll look at Tillya Tepe.
Almost contemporary with Begram but further to the north,
we see in 1978 perhaps Afghanistan's most amazing discovery,
a series of six intact nomadic burials.
And I'm going to show you a series of pictures
that Victor Sarianidi provided us.   These are rarely shown, so I'm happy
to show you the real archaeology behind the excavation
of these burials.
It was a very difficult excavation that was done in the winter
of 1978-1979 near Shibaran [spelled phonetically]
in northern Afghanistan, in our area of Bactria, of Horasan,
not far from the Turkmen and the Iranian borders.
It was freezing cold.
It was not Victor's area of expertise.
He was obliged to find these.   He did an amazing job excavating.
Here are the locals who came when they heard
that golden burials were being found in their backyard.
They were amazed.   Here's Burial No.
1. He did very fine excavations of these six nomadic burials,
allowing us for the first time to have a picture
of what Silk Road nomads would have looked like 2,000 years ago.
They were all wearing their wealth on them, completely covered
with gold appliques, with gold jewelry, with gold weapons.
Here you can see again the spectacular excavations
that Victor did.
You can see some antelope bracelets here.
You see the appliques in their own -- I mean, in their original place,
how they were originally found.
And they allowed Victor to create these drawings of how the dresses --
how these nomads would have looked like.
And it allows us to recreate
in the exhibition what the ancient nomads would have looked like.
It's an unusual situation.
I know of almost no circumstances in the archaeology of nomads
where you have such intact evidence of clothing for these.
So this is very, very special and it comes from our area of Afghanistan,
Turkmenistan and Northern Iran.
Here's excavations of -- there were six of them.
I'll show you another burial.   Here, this is, I believe, Burial No.
6. You can see even the wooden coffin is preserved,
this very rare picture that we have from Victor's archives
that he has provided to us.
Here you can see some of the actual skeletons.
Unfortunately, the skeletons were not preserved.
They were lost during the civil war.
The bones were saved at the Institute of Archaeology,
which was completely destroyed during the civil war.
The gold was preserved in the presidential bank vault,
so we have all of the gold [unintelligible].
Here's another one of these burials, this one, I --
well, again, one of the burials,
allowing us to reconstruct how these burials look, six, altogether,
allowing us to see what appears to be a nomadic family, one male
and five females, the male buried in the middle,
the females buried almost in a circle
in a very steppe nomadic fashion around that.
Here is actually the excavations of the -- the analysis of Burial No.
4, which was the male.   You can see they're excavating --
they have removed the back of the warrior.
And here, we actually found it like this.
It's still in the Kabul Museum like this today, still preserved.
It's one of the few pieces that we have with the bones still in it.
So there's an opportunity, I hope, for future researchers actually
to be able to do DNA work.
As many of you who've had a chance to see the exhibition or see some
of the films that are produced which are on TV or on the Web,
know that Victor didn't have any chance at all to publicize,
or to study, or exhibit these finds.
He made the discoveries of the six burials in 1978 and 1979.
By 1979, he had to slip back to Kabul.
It was already very, very difficult to get around.
You can imagine that the Soviet invasion was about to happen,
that everything was getting very tense and chaotic.
He quickly did an inventory of the golden objects,
found that there were 21,000 golden objects, and put them in boxes,
only to go back in 1982 to photograph them,
and didn't see them again after that.
In 2004 we opened up those boxes, we re-inventoried that,
and we came to this astonishing find
that all 21,000 pieces of gold were there.
Nobody had stolen them.   Nobody had melted them.
It was a discovery.
We brought Victor Sarianidi to Afghanistan to have that moment
of amazement to see that this treasure,
which is of world importance,
was saved for Afghanistan and for the world.
This is the 1982 photographic session.
This is the last time he had a chance to see it.
And these are some of the objects that we have from that collection
that show us something, which is remarkable after looking
at all these influences that we see in central Asia.
We see the original Bronze Age Oxus Civilization,
its own unique culture.
Then we see Hellenistic influences that come in from at Ai Khanum.
At Begram, we saw Indian influences.   We saw Roman and Greek influences.
We even see Chinese influences coming in,
all these different items being traded through Afghanistan
and this whole center of the Silk Road.
In the art of Tillya Tepe, in the art of the Bactrian nomads, however,
we see something different.   We see local manufacture.
This is likely local northern Afghan gold
from the Oxus River, from the Amu Darya.
And its artistry reflects this melting pot culture
where you see different pieces of Silk Road influences that have come
in and stayed in the local art.
Look at the robe of this, what we call the Bactrian Aphrodite.
It's sort of a very classical Western victory garb,
but on her forehead you see an Indian beauty mark
on the same piece mixed together in a unique Silk Road art.
These pieces are crafted with local stones, lots of local turquoise,
garnets, the turquoise being particularly interesting.
Well, here's some more pieces.
Let's see if I can come up with some turquoise.
These Cherubs [spelled phonetically] could have --
if you had seen these from an exhibition
on Pompeii you wouldn't be surprised at all.
Well, we'll get to the turquoise in a moment.
Here we see some of this native wealth of Northern Afghanistan.
These are anklets, each weighing about a kilogram and a half.
This is Afghan's wealth, it's the center of the Silk Road,
all being carried with these nomads as they traveled around.
And clearly they would've moved from northern Afghanistan into the areas
of modern Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Northern Iran.
Ah, finally, here we have some turquoise and garnets.
These particular stones intrigued me very much.
I was very curious where these stones came from,
and it all takes us back to Horasan.
We know that Northern Iran, Nishapur is a source
of turquoise going all the way back to the great Islamic writers,
Biruni [spelled phonetically] and a series of other writers,
who wrote about Nishapur's importance in turquoise,
so I had a chance to go to Nishapur to take a look and see that.
Here we see some more of that turquoise, but the hypothesis is
that it's all locally made.   The gold is local.
The turquoise is local.
And what we see is a true synthesis of all these influences
of the Silk Road put together finally
in its own distinctive style, including this nomadic crown,
which you will see on display.
It's a particularly fascinating piece.
It's truly nomadic.
It comes apart in six different pieces, five tree petals at the top
and the diadem going around.
It can be folded up, put in a pouch, and carried away
by the nomadic princess who had it to the next spot,
wherever she might be in Horasan.
Here you can see some more of the turquoise that became so interesting
for me to look at and wonder, "Where did it actually come from?"
So it took us to near Mashhad in Northern Iran.
And near Mashhad, the City of Nishapur is now being excavated
by a group of French and Iranian archaeologists.
And I just want to briefly mention about Iranian archaeology.
There is a renaissance of archaeology that's going
on in Iran all over Iran.
And I'll just briefly mention that at the end of the talk.
It's really quite incredible what is going
on with local Iranian archaeologists excavating everywhere, in Horasan,
in the south, in Fars, in the northwest.
Iranian archaeologists are having a renaissance of looking
at their own past, Islamic, pre-Islamic, and prehistoric.
Well, here's turquoise from Nishapur.
It's, believe me, exactly the same type of turquoise that we found
on the Tillya Tepe materials.
These are the current excavations at the site of Nishapur.
These excavations have just restarted again after a hiatus.
There were excavations in the 1930s up to about 1941 led
by the Metropolitan Museum of Art.   This is the citadel at Nishapur.
Unfortunately, after the Metropolitan Museum
of Art excavations there, they let the site out for at lease.
And what you see here is a moonscape of what used to be a citadel,
what used to be a site where people came and they just mined,
looking for pottery, looking for other goods
that might have been at the city.
And now it's up to modern archaeologists to map,
to reconstruct what the citadel must have looked like.
Here's some of what people were looking for.
These are the famous Nishapuri [spelled phonetically] ceramics,
beautiful ninth, 10th, and 11th century ceramics,
many of them surprising to, sort of, the Islamic world
because not only do they have images of birds and calligraphic images,
but they also have images of people, which is perhaps counterintuitive
to tenets of Islamic art, but was a true aspect of Northern Iran,
Northern Afghanistan, and Turkmen renaissance during the early
Islamic period.
Well, I want to end there in terms of looking at the archaeology
of these three regions, and now just briefly turn
to what these countries are thinking about their own past
and what they are doing, how Afghans are treating their past,
how Iranians are treating their past,
how Turkmens are treating their past,
and how cultural heritage is viewed in these countries.
This is a tragic photo.
This is the Kabul Museum in 1993 when it had been taken
over as a militia headquarters,
and received a direct bomb, and lost its roof.
It lost its windows and, as far as the whole world thought,
it lost all of its artifacts.
You can see, here's the Kabul Museum when I had a chance to see it.
It had nothing in it.
And I think for most of the scholars, we thought that most
of the collections were lost.
Here's the Kabul Museum in 2003 as we're just beginning
to think about restoring it.
And then the boxes were found, and we realized that, no,
the collections of the Kabul Museum were not lost.
They were hidden.   They were safeguarded by Afghans.
And there is a chance now to restore the museum.
And I think this is an important thing for people to know,
that Afghans are deeply involved in this process.
We want to restore them.
We want to help them restore their museum.
We want them to restore their pride in their past.
And we're very happy to work very closely with the Director
of the National Museum, Mr. Omara Khan Masoodi,
in revitalizing Afghans' cultural heritage,
so we're working very closely with the Afghans on this.
In Turkmenistan they have a different situation.
Archaeology is very vibrant in Turkmenistan to the north.
With the Turkmenbashi Period,
obviously there was a slight deviation
in how history was looked at.
Nevertheless, archaeology was very, very much alive
and archaeology actually flourished during the Turkmenbashi Period.
Excavations at Merv -- this is the famous mosque at Anau.
And one of the things that happened during this time is
that there was a great interest in this early history of central Asia,
not only in the Oxus Civilization but especially
in their earliest periods, the very first settlers to the area.
In fact, this is a museum that the President of Turkmenistan built
for our project near Anau.
It's a museum devoted to wheat because it was on our excavations
that we found the earliest bread wheat in central Asia,
perhaps the earliest bread wheat in the greater Near East.
So, of course, this is our only bread wheat museum that we have
in the greater Near East, and I'm happy that it's very close
to our site in Turkmenistan.
Finally, I want to say a few words about Iran.
As I mentioned, Iran is also going
through a renaissance in archaeology.
It doesn't make the news as much as other things going on in Iran,
but I think it's important to know that Iranians today have a passion
for their past, have a past -- this is Persepolis --
that there's restoration of the great Persian sites,
that there is excavations of prehistoric sites,
there's excavations of Islamic sites.
We at National Geographic, we recognize this.
And it was the cover story of August's edition
of National Geographic magazine.   And the Iranians were incredible
about giving our journalists carte blanche to go
and photograph these archaeological sites and the Iranian work in Iran.
Here is one of the early sites, which is really quite interesting.
It's a site near Jiroft, which is not so far from the Afghan border,
from the Baluchistan Borders, which has some similarities
to the Oxus Civilization, may predate it.
And we're just learning about this today.
Here's one of the artifacts that was only discovered
for the first time a few years ago.   It's a carved steatite vessel,
very similar to some carved steatite vessels that have been known
for some 25, 30 years from Southern Iran.
But now we find an enormous set of sites with these early things,
just changing our picture of where the center
of civilization should be.
Obviously, Persepolis is being hailed both in Iran
and around the world as a great monument.
And it's paradoxical in today's world, in Iran,
in terms of their identity.
But, in fact, I believe that this is truly part
of Iranians' national character,
about pan-Persian language character.
Here we see this paradox in -- at one of the signature pictures
from the National Geographic article,
here at Persepolis they're filming a film
about modern Islamic culture at Persepolis.
And we'll end there.
I think that gives us a few minutes for questions.
So thank you very much for that very brief overview
of this important part of the world.   [applause]
So the question is, there was a report a couple of years ago
about the potential of a third large Buddha being found
in the Bamiyan Valley, and it's an interesting story.
According to the Chinese documents, a Chinese traveler,
Shwansang [spelled phonetically], who went through the area
in the sixth century A.D., there were three Buddhas
in the Bamiyan Valley, two standing and one reclining.
So a professor originally from Afghanistan, now from France,
Professor Tarzi went back after 2001, sort of symbolically
to sort of, you know, resurrect the Buddhas in a way,
to find that third Buddha.
His excavations in the Bamiyan Valley have been extremely fruitful.
He's found monasteries.
He's found all sorts of, you know, remains.
The entire valley is an archaeological site.
The reclining Buddha may be a little bit elusive to find
because most likely it wasn't carved of stone, most likely it was made
of unbaked clay, so to find something after, you know,
1,200 years intact like that is not very likely.
But the ability to conduct new excavations in Afghanistan, I think,
is really very wonderful, and his excavations have been very fruitful.
So the question is about all sorts of trade and connections.
What about horses and elephants?
And how does the lapis and turquoise fit into these areas.
Obviously, an area like Northern Afghanistan, Turkmenistan,
and Northern Iran have tremendous amount of resources, the steppe area
to the north being an area for original horse domestication,
elephants being able to move up from South Asia into this area.
We know that they would have gone up into the Hindu Kush,
we have bone evidence of that.
So, definitely, this area, which is kind
of like a Neapolitan ice cream, right?
You've got the northern area,
you've got the western area being very Iranian,
you've got the southern area being very South Asian.
It draws from all of these resources.
What's fascinating to me is to see from, you know,
several thousand years ago this sort of Neapolitan ice cream character
of Afghanistan, and Southern Turkmenistan,
and Northern Iran having the same character
for literally thousands of years.
And so one can question, you know, "Is this the character,
is this the ancient identity of this region?"
It's a concept that I struggle with all the time
because I think it is but, you know, it's a very difficult one
because it's actually three different personalities all at once.
Hirad asked a very, very important question,
is that we have an art style
that has been traditionally called Elamite or trans-Elamite,
which incorporates some of these sculptures that we've seen.
The Steatite Sculptures from Jeroft are some
of those beautiful stone composite pieces
from the Oxus Civilization further north.
Archaeology is such an interesting field because what we try to do
as archaeologists is always prove everybody wrong, right?
That's our job and it's not that we have any problems
with the old concepts, it's that we're eager
to expand the sphere of knowledge.
And what has really been interesting is that as we're beginning
to do these excavations in Iran, or Turkmenistan, or Afghanistan,
we start finding centers of production
that we hadn't known about before.
So all of a sudden these sculptures or this art style
that had been known as sort of, you know, part of the Elamite world
or part of something, all of a sudden we find it has a home here
in Central Asia, or Eastern Iran,
or northern Afghanistan, and it helps us rethink.
Now, that doesn't mean that there wasn't a strong connection
to the Elamite world.   Obviously, there was.
Obviously there was a lot of trade connection.
But we have to think now about a more populated world
than we had before, that the ancient Persian world,
the ancient Iranian world was in connection
with the ancient Oxus world, which was in contact
with the ancient Indus world.
In our field of archaeology, we have kind of a pendulum process that goes
on of contact or non-contact.
When I was in graduate school there was, like,
no contact between the Indus world and Mesopotamia.
Now, as we're finding more of these pieces of the puzzle in between,
it seems that surely there is contact.
And so, we want to fill in.
We want to go to these places in between.
So it's kind of exciting.
We don't have real answers about, you know, who was who.
But we definitely are beginning to fill the gaps
of these places in between.
Yeah, the question is, "Has DNA analysis been done on any
of these ancient Oxus groups?"
I'm sorry to say that none has been done yet.
The technique is still being worked out for ancient bone.
But there are a lot of people working on it.
It's one of the cutting edges of archaeology and of science.
And I'm sure that ancient DNA will be able to answer a lot of questions
about who's related to who,
and especially how various groups are related vis-a-vis
language groups.
So that's our best hope for understanding ancient movements
of peoples and languages.   So the question is in the exhibit,
thanks to Victor Sarianidi's drawings,
we actually have reconstructions of the burials.
And we actually do have sizes of how big the individuals were.
And we have two surprises.
One is that the male was over six feet tall.
He was very big and very robust.
And, I mean, it was kind of surprising to do the metrics of him.
The five female individuals ranging from 20
to 40 years old, they're all smaller.
And it's unclear exactly how they're related to him.
But having studied the 20,000 pieces of gold that were
with the exhibition and actually having counted them, as well,
I can tell you that there is this incredible similarity
of manufacture of those gold objects.
Go to the gallery and take a look at it yourself,
and imagine that times 20, like I had to do
because there's 1,000 pieces there, we had 20,000 pieces,
and the similarity suggests that there was one workshop,
suggesting to me that it was one family.
That's how I like to think about this.
And it was probably a very wealthy family, as well.
And I just don't see it being anything other
than a very wealthy nomadic family that perished in some sort
of tragedy in Northern Afghanistan.
Anybody who's been to Northern Afghanistan knows it's very cold
in the winter, it's very hot in the summer, there's famine,
there's every reason to have a tragedy because they seem
to have been very carefully and considerately buried.
So I think it is a family but, of course,
further tests need to be done.
Well, the question is, really, you know, if I can paraphrase it,
saying, you know, "How can we still do archaeology
with these difficult countries
of Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, and Iran?"
I like to think that archaeology has a role in international politics.
We are often ambassadors, since -- we're apolitical.
You should see my map of the Silk Road.
There's no political boundaries on it, right?
[laughter] I mean, we're the ultimate idealists.
So, I mean, to think that I had the opportunity to work
in Turkmenistan beginning in 1986 during the Soviet period,
and I worked every year right up through 2003
until when Afghanistan started, that cultural heritage people continuing
to work in Afghanistan -- Carla Grissman, a volunteer,
worked in the Kabul Museum throughout the '80s and '90s,
right up through the end of the Taliban time --
it's very useful for us, sort of, naive people to be able to go
to these countries that seem impossible.
And I think it's important for Americans, to continue to be engaged
in Iranian archaeology,
to understand that they have a rich cultural heritage,
as the news reports tends to be biased towards,
you know, a political agenda.
We need to know that all of these areas, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan,
and Iran, have an ancient heritage, which is all part of our heritage,
as well, and that we all need to be partners in this.
And so, I don't think that we will get cut out of these areas.
I don't think that -- you know, we've survived working
in these countries during all sorts of difficult regimes.
And we will continue.   So thank you very much.
[applause]   [end of transcript]