Central Asia is a neighbor that is a little strange to contemporary Chinese, but it is also a long-standing partner on the Silk Road. From the vague imagination of the Western Regions, camel bells, and Hu Whirling Dances, to the historical terms related to Central Asia, such as Zoroastrianism, An Lushan, and Duhufu, modern archaeology has made them come to us alive through the smoke of history in the past hundred years.
Among them, archaeologists in Central Asia have made a lot of contributions, such as the Hellenistic barns of Samarkand, the murals of the palaces of Katazhikent... All from their excavations and research.
Rtveladze is a name that cannot be ignored in Central Asian archaeology. The archaeologist from the Caucasus has been rooted in Uzbekistan for many years, having long served as the head of the Uzbek National Archaeological Team for twenty years and as a member of the Academy of Sciences. He presided over the excavations of the ruins of the ancient city of Mulu, the Parthian palace of the ancient city of Nissa, and the ruins of buddhist temples on the outskirts of the ancient city of Termez on the way through Xuanzang.
As an archeological hero, he has published many academic works, but this memoir-like "Fifty Years of Hot Land and Barren Hills" can give people a glimpse of the archaeologist's mental journey and life trajectory when digging out an ancient world with one shovel after a shovel.
[Uzbekistan] Red Vilaza/Author; Chen Jiejun/Translation; Guangxi Normal University Press, | I think Cogito; 2021-11
Born in Kislovodsk, Georgia, in 1942, Red Vilaza grew up in an environment that had nothing to do with archaeology, as he says. However, he loved to read from an early age, especially history and geography.
In middle school, he began to excavate in the wilderness around his hometown with friends who shared the same interests, and later joined the local archaeological team and began systematic excavations, proudly declaring that in Kislovodsk, there was no place they had not been to, and there was no site that they had not discovered. His initial fieldwork training also took shape in this group.
An excavation by the Kislovodsk archaeological team, in the tomb of Safronovsky. The figures in this article are provided by the publisher
Not far from the Georgian health resort of Mineralnye Vody, Kislovodsk visited one summer day in the late 1950s when Red veraza heard that the famous Central Asian archaeologist Mikhail Masson was recuperating. It was this visit that led him from the Caucasus to Central Asian archaeology, starting from the ancient city of Merv deep in the desert and heading towards Sogdians and Bactria.
Professor Ma Song
At the age of 19, Red Vilaza, at the invitation of Mazon, went to the ancient city of Merv for a year. Merv was an ancient oasis city in the south of present-day Turkmenistan. During the Bronze Age from 2300 BC to 1700 BC, it was the center of the Bactria–Margiana Archaeological Complex along with Balkh, which Zoroastrians consider to be one of the sixteen sacred places created by Ahura Mazda.
After the Sassanid Dynasty ruled here, it became an important coin minting town and a gathering place for many different religions, including Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, Manichaeism, Christianity (Eastern Church), etc. Later, in the Hellenistic era, it was the administrative center of Margiana under the seleucid Empire. It was followed by successive rule by Arabs, Turks, and Safavid Persia. In the 12th to 13th centuries, it was once one of the largest cities in the world, with a population of up to 500,000 people. Until Genghis Khan's Western Expedition destroyed it, the city was gradually abandoned.
During his first year at the camp in Merv, Red Virazza learned for the first time about comprehensive expeditions and for the first time about the methods of field research on the ruins of large ancient cities.
The central hall of the South Turkmenistan (Turkmenistan) comprehensive study camp
Upon his return, he decided to enter the archaeological laboratory of Masson at Tashkent State University and began to systematically study the history of Central Asia. "Following in the Footsteps of the Ancient Khwarazm Culture" was once his only source of understanding the archaeology of Central Asia, and later, he bought works such as Sven Heddin's "Travels in the Heart of Asia" from old booksellers, which made him more and more interested in Central Asia.
The first trip to Uzbekistan, which later put him in his roots, was in 1962, when Riedvraza was 20 years old. At that time, he was invited by Masson's wife, Pugachenkova, who was also an archaeologist, to serve as an archaeological collector for the 1962 Uzbek Art Expedition, but was not responsible for the travel expenses. At this time, the future god of Central Asian archaeology was going to Uzbekistan and needed to earn his own airfare from Minewater to Tashkent, worth 38 rubles.
Invitation letter from Pugachenkova
Ridvillaza recorded in detail the daily life of an archaeologist rookie — the exchanges and learning with his predecessors, and the daily work content , which sounded a bit boring , " Every day to draw and record nearly a hundred ceramic fragments , in addition to being responsible for the cultural layer of the exploration plane and the registration of discoveries." ”
However, as a memoir, this book does not only focus on the author's academic career, he will also use humorous brushstrokes to describe some tidbits of archaeological life, such as hard cakes that even termites can't see, stealing watermelons and being chased all the way by melon watchers riding donkeys, and archaeologists having to sleep on the kitchen stove when it is cold... Sometimes he also grumbles because the top layers of the site of the stratigraphic pits they need to excavate are "terrible modern garbage", slag scrap iron rags, slowing down the archaeological work.
At the field camp "Uzi Art Expedition", Red Vilaza is in front of the mud hut of the camp
His text also tells the social picture of the Central Asian states of the Soviet period in the 1960s, and they no longer exist today, just like the train he described to Merv, which is not only convenient, but also a reproduction of the "ancient trade route", but unfortunately, with the independence of the Central Asian countries, this train has become a memory.
Quoting his mentor Masson's 1944 speech at the Central Asian National University, he also pointed out with nostalgia that the skillful use of Latin in speech was natural for the older generation of professors, thus showing the influence of classical secondary school and its emphasis on ancient literature, "but in today's speeches, such words are almost unheard." ”
In 1963, he went to the archaeological excavations in Kesh. The ancient city of Kesh was once ruled by the Sogdians, and according to China's Northern History and Book of Sui, the rulers of Kesh during this period were all born with the surname of Zhaowu Jiu. Later, Kash experienced the rule of the Qarakhanids, Khwarazm and Timurid dynasties and was renamed Shahrisabz. During the reign of the Timurid dynasty, Shahri Sabuz became a garden city, with many buildings rising from the ground, the most famous of which was Timur's palace, Ak-Saray.
Professor Masson during the Kesh expedition
This expedition also enabled him to use the "visual skills" he received as a teenager. His steps are accurate, exactly one meter, and he can draw floor plans of ancient cities and ancient villages in this way. And this training has benefited him a lot in his future archaeological work. "Eye mapping is more important than instrumentation, because archaeologists can mark historical terrain more prominently on floor plans, and fewer and fewer people have the skill," he said. ”
How to visually map the floor plan of the site? He illustrated this in 1990 at the beginning of the first joint Uzbek-Japanese expedition in the famous ancient city of Darvi.
"I tried for a long time to explain to my Japanese colleagues that they could draw accurate floor plans without complicated instruments, and they were very skeptical. I then sketched out the plot of land for Darvi's allowance and quickly handed them the floor plan. They...... Re-measured with a laser theodolite, the result is that the error does not exceed one meter in the coincidence of terrain and area. In order to represent the terrain of the target, it is possible to mark the horizontal line, for this, it is necessary to know exactly the distance from the landmark to the palm of the right hand stretched forward, I am 1.5 meters. And then. Stand in front of the collapsed wall, stretch your right hand, aim it at a fixed point on the wall, and measure the distance from the starting point to this point on the wall. This is the first horizontal line. ”
Red Vilaza washed his clothes outside the camp
Since then, starting from academic research and fieldwork in his university years, Red Vilaza officially began his life in Central Asia. Later, the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Commission of Uzbekistan, Safyev, used Uzbek saying that his life's work was "digging a well with a needle". In his scientific career, he published thirty monographs and more than eight hundred articles, shoveling out mounds and sand mountains measured in tons, not in lush vegetation oases, but in the deserts of Central Asia, in places far from cities and harsh climates. His work "is to give people more insight into this land, the pages of great civilization history and cultural memory that it once had."