News from the field
Sometimes you are just lucky! Few days ago I wrote that the biggest challenge of this week would be to offer you updated information on current Azerbaijani events. Well, today I got probably the most updated information this far. Yesterday midnight Barbara Helwing and Tavakkul Aliyev, both archaeologists, came back from a joint Azerbaijan-German excavation in the prehistoric site of Kamiltepe, Mil Steppe and this afternoon they held a lecture at Caspian Plaza. The lecture was held in English and the event was co-sponsored by the American Research Institute of the South Caucasus (ARISC) and the Caucasus Research Resource Centers (CRRC). Due to the freshness of the news Helwing was just able to show preliminary topografic maps and photos of the site known since the 50's and now working as a nature reserve. What the archaeological team managed to find this summer was more than amazing and in their invitation letter they express that "it came as a big surprise that the site turned out to consist in large parts of a massive mudbrick platform, preserved to a height of 13 layers of brick. Apparently, life in the fifth millennium BC took place aroundand possibly on top of this platform". Since I didn't read the invitation letter too carefuly it came as a surprise even for me. To see the photos from this place, defined as half desert and just beside the Kura river, of something that has possibly been a meeting point more than 2000 years ago was 
astonishing. The first hypothesis of the team was that the mudbricks had been placed at this place, carved out in the middle of nowhere, in the Middle Ages but when observing the structure of the bricks and the many kilos of conserved pottery, with similarities to Central Asia/Turkmenistan rather than to Mesopotamia, the initial hypothesis took a new turn. It was now understood that the site dated much beyond the first supposition. However, still there are no one that actually knows the age of the excavation site why we will have to wait for the results from the radiocarbon dating in order to get an answer.
Sometimes you are just lucky! Few days ago I wrote that the biggest challenge of this week would be to offer you updated information on current Azerbaijani events. Well, today I got probably the most updated information this far. Yesterday midnight Barbara Helwing and Tavakkul Aliyev, both archaeologists, came back from a joint Azerbaijan-German excavation in the prehistoric site of Kamiltepe, Mil Steppe and this afternoon they held a lecture at Caspian Plaza. The lecture was held in English and the event was co-sponsored by the American Research Institute of the South Caucasus (ARISC) and the Caucasus Research Resource Centers (CRRC). Due to the freshness of the news Helwing was just able to show preliminary topografic maps and photos of the site known since the 50's and now working as a nature reserve. What the archaeological team managed to find this summer was more than amazing and in their invitation letter they express that "it came as a big surprise that the site turned out to consist in large parts of a massive mudbrick platform, preserved to a height of 13 layers of brick. Apparently, life in the fifth millennium BC took place aroundand possibly on top of this platform". Since I didn't read the invitation letter too carefuly it came as a surprise even for me. To see the photos from this place, defined as half desert and just beside the Kura river, of something that has possibly been a meeting point more than 2000 years ago was 
astonishing. The first hypothesis of the team was that the mudbricks had been placed at this place, carved out in the middle of nowhere, in the Middle Ages but when observing the structure of the bricks and the many kilos of conserved pottery, with similarities to Central Asia/Turkmenistan rather than to Mesopotamia, the initial hypothesis took a new turn. It was now understood that the site dated much beyond the first supposition. However, still there are no one that actually knows the age of the excavation site why we will have to wait for the results from the radiocarbon dating in order to get an answer. Today's lecture ended with Helwing stating that the excavation shows that South Caucasia is a region that unites cultures, not only by connecting north and south but also west with east.
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