Joint Dig Finds New City

Breaking new ground last summer, a Harvard archaeologist directed the American half of a joint U.S./Russian expedition that uncovered a previously unknown Bronze Age civilization.

Harvard Professor of Anthropology C.C. Lamberg-Karlovsky said that the Russian site in Sarazm, near the Afghanistan border, uncarthed another major urban center from the time of the Bronze Age.

"It expands our understanding of the geographical extent in which the earliest sort of urbanization takes place," Lamberg-Karlovsky said.

The 25 Russian and American excavators found gold, silver and bronze jewelry, tools and weapons which dated from 3200 to 1800 B.C.--the span of the Bronze Age.

Russian and American scholars began thinking of a joint-expedition in 1979, but it took two years for them "to come to an understanding that this would even be a possibility," said Lamberg-Karlovsky. Although Americans and Russians may have worked together before on an individual basis, this dig marks the first collaboration which the two countries have sponsored.

Lamberg-Karlovsky said that working with the Soviet scientists "has almost become an equal counterpart to the archaeology itself."

Philip Kohl, an assistant professor of anthropology at Wellesley College, has been involved with the project since its inception, and yesterday he quipped, "it's a good rock upon which to build a collaborative archaeological exchange between the United States and the Soviet Union."

Sponsored by the International Research and Exchanges Board of the Council of Learned Societies and by the Soviet Academy of Sciences, the excavation program will run for four more years said Lamberg-Karlovsky. Next year, five Americans, including two or three Harvard graduate students will accompany him.