St Petersburg International Conference of Afghan Studies

86 Санкт-Петербургская международная конференция по афганистике СЕКЦИЯ 6 Религии, культура и археология Афганистана и трансграничных регионов афганской культурно-лингвистической ойкумены PANEL SIX Religions, Material Culture and Archaeology of Afghanistan and the Liminal Areas of the Afghan Linguistic and Cultural Oecumene Warwick Ball (Independent scholar, Edinburgh, UK) Archaeology in Afghanistan: Recent Discoveries, Current State of Research, New Developments Since increasing instability in the late 1970s brought archaeological fieldwork to a halt, Afghanistan has been in a state of almost continual upheaval. There was a brief resumption of limited fieldwork in the early 21 st century, but further instability halted most of this. One would reasonably expect therefore the field to be virtually moribund. However, the sheer quantity and quality of new discoveries in and research on Afghanistan over that period has been overwhelming. The following are just some of these activities. New excavations at Tepe Zargaran at Balkh have uncovered remains of a Hellenistic temple 1 . A substantial city of theAchaemenid period at Chashma Safa south of Balkh has been recorded, whose remains include a fire temple 2 . Excavations 1 Mairs R. The Archaeology of the Hellenistic Far East: A Survey . Oxford, 2011. P. 29–30. 2 Besenval R., Rassouli N. Les travaux de l’Insitut Afghane d’Archéologie et de la Délégation Archéologique de France en Afghanistan // Afghanistan Archaeological Review (2010). P. 1–27.