St Petersburg International Conference of Afghan Studies

88 Санкт-Петербургская международная конференция по афганистике Секция 6. Религии, культура и археология Афганистана Афганистана... important additions to Central Asian painting in fifty years 1 . The spectacular discovery of a new Sasanian relief of Shapur at Rag-i Bibi near Pul-i Khumri has in a single stroke dramatically extended our knowledge of Sasanian art 2 . All of these discoveries foreshadow greater ones still to come. There are many exciting recent, new and ongoing research projects. The British Museum has been engaged in a study of the large numbers of objects and coins brought fromAfghanistan to London in the 19 th century by Charles Masson 3 . The Oriental Institute at the University of Oxford recently completed the Balkh Art and Cultural Heritage Project on medieval Balkh 4 . Oxford University Press is shortly to bring out a comprehensive sites and monuments record of Afghanistan based upon the 1982 Archaeological Gazetteer of Afghanistan 5 . The University of Oxford also hosts the Gandhara Connections Project 6 . The Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago are engaged in a highly detailed heritage mapping project of Afghanistan based upon high resolution satellite imagery 7 . The American Institute of Afghanistan Studies is launching a new scholarly journal on Afghanistan, the only one devoted solely to Afghanistan, to be published by Edinburgh University Press. 8 Edinburgh University Press are also bringing out a number of new titles relating to Afghanistan, and are actively expanding their Central Asian studies list. The past year alone has also seen a number of conferences relating toAfghanistan: Hellenistic Central Asia in April 2016 at University of Reading, Architecture of the Iranian World 1000–1250 inApril at University of St Andrews, Limits of Empire in Afghanistan 600 BCE— 650 CE in October at University of Chicago, Archaeology and Heritage of Central Asia in December at University of London, to name just some. All of these include ongoing research activities. The current conference at the University of St Petersburg thus forms an appropriate culmination. 1 Lee J. L., Grenet F. New Light on the Sasanid Painting at Ghulbiyan, Faryab Province, Afghanistan // South Asian Studies , 14 (1998). P. 75–85. 2 Grenet F., Lee J., Martinez Ph., Ory F. ‘The Sasanian relief at Rag-i Bibi (Northern Afghanistan)’. Joe Cribb & Georgina Herrmann (eds.). After Alexander. Central Asia Before Islam . Oxford, 2007. P. 243–267. 3 http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/research_projects/all_current_projects/ masson_project.aspx. 4 http://www.balkhheritage.org. 5 Ball W. Archaeological Gazetteer of Afghanistan . Paris: A. D. P. F. , 1982 . 6 http://www.carc.ox.ac.uk/GandharaConnections. 7 https://oi.uchicago.edu/research/camel/afghan-heritage-mapping-partnership. 8 https://afghan-institute.org/publications/journal.