Preliminary report of the first season work of the International Pluridisciplinary Archaeological Expedition to Bactria 2008

Abstract

This year the development of our project can be divided into two main clearly different parts, on one hand the laboratory work, where the sampled ceramic individuals has been prepared and analyzed and the elaboration of the data obtained during the excavation of 2007 has been finished and, on the other hand, the field work developed at the archaeological site during this specific year (2008). In the mark of the analytical work a significant number of ceramic individuals (144) from the different stratigraphical units from various areas of the excavation of Termez and Tchinguiz Tepe sampled during the new and previous field works has been archaeometrically characterized. This specific material included individuals dated into the Hellenistic and Sassanian period, which has been confirmed by C14 dating upon organic samples. At the same time, in the mark of the field work of 2008 the archaeological record, already started to be under study during the excavation of 2007, has been completed and two new archaeological records have been registered on of which is located in the area of Tchinguiz Tepe. For the archeological study the information of the previous geophysical prospecting has been indisputably taken into consideration and the same methodology has been applied to crosscheck the latter archaeological results.