Dr. Aydogdy Kurbanov
Aydogdy Kurbanov is a historian and archaeologist who specialize in the study of the Prehistoric and Late Antique Central Asia. Born in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, he graduated from the Turkmen State University named after Magtymguly and he did a Ph.D. at the Free University of Berlin (2010). His thesis “The Hephthalites: archaeological and historical analysis” is a wide-ranging work that is a substantial building stone for a history of the Late Antique period in Central Asia. Dr. Kurbanov in his work draws on an astounding variability of sources, from the Chinese, Byzantine, Iranian and Indian sources and associated languages, to architecture, burial forms, coins and pottery. With this broad, overarching approach, Dr. Kurbanov was able to highlight particular problems of Central Asian history.
He has been a postdoctoral researcher in archaeology and history at the at the German Archaeological Institute’s Eurasia Section in Berlin.
In 2007 and 2016-2017 he worked at the University of Pennsylvania’s Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations and the University of Chicago’s Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures (ISAC) (former Oriental Institute) on the research projects dedicated to the history and archaeology of the Late Antique Central Asia under the Fulbright Scholar Program.
Since his return to Turkmenistan, he had been senior researcher and later the Head of the Archaeology department of the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography at the Academy of Sciences of Turkmenistan. He has co-organized major conferences and done excavations in Turkmenistan. Dr. Kurbanov has meanwhile vastly extended his research interests and directs an excavation project at Dashly-depe in Turkmenistan with financial support from the National Geographic. He has extremely important new data on the prehistoric sequence in this part of Turkmenistan, and this information on the transition from the Neolithic to the Chalcolithic periods concerns one of the enigmatic aspects of the chronology of early Central Asia. Before joining to the ONGC he was a research fellow at the Institute of Ancient Near Eastern Archaeology of the Free University of Berlin.
He has published a number of articles devoted to different period of the history of Turkmenistan and he is an author and co-author of the 5 books which reflects his research interests, including a monograph The History and Archaeology of the Hephthalites. Bonn, Germany: Habelt Verlag, 2013.
Currently his research interest is the North-Eastern frontiers of the Sasanian Empire (226-651). This is a project Dr Kurbanov is already working on for several years, and the preliminary results of his research are very interesting indeed. His research, when successfully accomplished will certainly contribute to our understanding of various developments that were taking place in the Southern Turkmenistan in Late Antique period.
In parallel to his above-mentioned project in the ONGC Dr Kurbanov will work on final editing and preparing for publication the “Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Turkmenistan” together with his colleague Dr Paul Wordsworth (University of Oxford/UCL). This volume will be the first attempt to write a handbook devoted solely to the rich archaeological heritage of Turkmenistan. The book will serve as a comprehensive handbook for researchers in this region, and of course to wide array of readers interested in the major aspects of archaeological research in Turkmenistan. The book is planned to be published by the Oxford University Press (OUP), as a printed and digital monograph.
