The Italian-Uzbek Archaeological Project

Since 2008 joint Uzbek-Italian archaeological activities of the Institute of Archaeology of the Academy of Sciences of Uzbekistan, Samarkand (IAASU) and the Università degli Studi di Napoli “L’Orientale” (UNO) have been carried out in the Pastdargom district in the Samarkand area. These field activities located in a crucial part of the historical Sogdiana. followed a two-years (2007-2008) of intense contacts with the Uzbek colleagues, with the former director of IAASU Dr. Shakirdjan Pidaev, the present Dr. Amriddin Berdimuradov and Prof. Maurizio Tosi as well, director of the Italian Archaeological Mission of the Università degli Studi di Bologna, Alma Mater (UsB). The scientific reasons of these activities were and are mostly aimed at trying to study and analyse the archaeological consistency of an area within the 6th - 4th century BC, recorded for the first time in the trilingual inscription of Bisutun of Darius the Great (522-486 BC) with the use of the ethnonym or toponym “Sogd/Sugd” , and much more known, in a detailed way, in the early mediaeval time for its ethno-cultural and ethno-linguistic eastern-Iranian Sogdian background (4th - 7th century AD).