October 31, 2024
The Department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures (MELC) is excited to announce that Dr. Sanjyot Mehendale has joined the Silk Road – High-elevation Urbanism (SR-HUBS) project in Uzbekistan. This pioneering initiative emerged from a groundbreaking LiDAR project led by Dr. Michael Frachetti of Washington University in St. Louis and Dr. Farhad Maksudov from the Institute of Archaeology in Tashkent, Uzbekistan.
SR-HUBS is an interdisciplinary research initiative centered on “mountain urbanism.” The project, focused on the site of Tugunbulak, investigates the economic, social, cultural, and political landscape of the Turkic communities who inhabited the mountainous terrains of Central Asia during medieval times. Historically, 19th- and 20th-century historiography often placed the mobile, pastoral Turkic people on the periphery of Eurasian civilization, focusing instead on sedentary societies. In recent years, however, scholars have increasingly acknowledged the critical role of nomadic societies in shaping the region’s history. This shift, bolstered by new archaeological insights, is deepening our understanding of these complex and dynamic communities and their significant contributions to the region’s historical development.