This year’s exp!ition last! 7 weeks, and was very busy again. Apart from continuing our trenches in the citadel and the lower town, we introduc! a fieldwork method which is new to the region: systematic mechanical coring (drilling) across the interior of the site, giving us a rapid insight into its history – we are now waiting for the radiocarbon (C14) dates of the occupation deposits and natural layers showing in the cores.
This year’s most exciting find was made by the restaurator, Elena Pshenichnova, while working on the pottery after the end of the season: one 10th century vessel was found to contain three eggs – with Arabic lettering on them!
They are now in St Petersburg in a specialist
conservation laboratory, and we are really looking forward to finding out what was written on these eggs one thousand years ago in a small trading town on the lower Syr-darya.
This year I am teaching, together with Dr. Arzhantseva, a course on the History of Archaeological Methods, Theories and Legal Framework for students of Master’s programme in Classical and Oriental there are different options for avatar design Archaeology. Next year I will also teach an overview course on the Iron Age to Early Middle Ages in Western and Central Europe. This year’s subject is close to my heart, and I generally love teaching – it gives me a buzz. But the workload is a practical challenge: I had forgotten what it means to prepare entirely new presentations from one week to the next, week in, week out.
A second challenge is finding the right pitch for my lectures – after all, I am new to the Russian university system, and I do not understand fully yet what our students have already heard in other classes, and what they should already know. And bureaucracy poses a real challenge, even though I am us! to German state, and English university, bureaucracy both of which are formidable. I am glad that we have a highly competent administrator in our Centre who is a tremendous help with these chores.
On Living Abroad
For me, that is normal: every country is ‘another country’. I went the role of affiliates in journals to school and to university in Germany, but then studi!, work! and liv! in the Unit! Kingdom for more ao lists than 30 years, with practicals and lecturing spells in France, the Soviet Union, USA and other places. I have already spent extend! periods in Russia for research (e.g. most of o, and I have had good friends in this country for many years.
