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The
journal entry for May 31, 2ooo, is uncharacteristically laconic
for Fred Hiebert. It mentions a stone step, a few pieces of
charcoal, some clay lumps. Then, finally: “Found a small black
stamp seal in the backdirt from 221.” There are no exclamation
marks.
IT
WAS HOT THAT DAY,
but then, it’s always hot in Turkmenistan that time of year.
By 10 a.m., the sun was over the walls of the main trench
and the wind was whipping dust into the eyes and sweaty brows
of the crew. The three Americans (all from Penn), six Turkmen,
one Russian, and one Dane were digging in a small area of
Unit 221, a Bronze Age storage or administrative room—hauling
the dirt to the backdirt pile and sifting it through a quarter-inch-mesh
screen.
Hiebert,
the Robert H. Dyson Assistant Professor of Anthropology and
assistant curator of the University Museum’s Near East section,
was directing the dig at the base of the south kurgan at
Anau. That great mound of mud-brick walls and rubble, nearly
50 feet high, is all that’s left of a Bronze Age civilization
that flourished some 4,500 years ago in the fertile strip
between the Kopet Dag mountains and the Kara Kum desert. (The
name Anau comes from old words meaning “new water.”)
Another mound, the north kurgan, dates back more than
6,000 years to the Copper Age.
During
the past few weeks, the crew had uncovered a complex of rooms,
surprisingly large and well built. From the charcoal, they
were able to date it to 2300 B.C. But getting to the bottom
was taking a lot longer than they had expected.
From
his perch at the top of the south kurgan, Hiebert could
see a white Niva driving toward them. It belonged to his Turkmen
colleague on the dig, Dr. Kakamurad Kurbansakhatov, better
known as Murad. His arrival was a perfect excuse for the crew
to break for “second breakfast”: tea and cookies on the ornamental
felt mats while a group of camels munched on camelthorn nearby.
The
white Niva pulled up. Murad got out. As he walked past the
backdirt pile from Unit 221, he noticed something in the still-moist
soil and picked it up. He chided Ana and Kakish, the young
Turkmen screeners, for tossing onto the pile what must have
looked to them like a dirt-encrusted pebble. Then he called
Hiebert over and handed the tiny object to him.
Hiebert
looked at it carefully, then took it over to a nearby irrigation
canal and washed off the dirt. One crew member—Lauren Zych
C’99 G’00, then a graduate student in anthropology—recalls
that he became “very excited.” That would not be out of character
for Hiebert, whose enthusiasm is legendary. But he himself
recalls being “deep in thought.” It was a stamp seal, clearly,
though he couldn’t decipher its inscription. At the time he
thought it was probably Harappan—another ancient civilization
from the Indus Valley, some 1,600 kilometers away. A nice
find, good evidence of interregional trading—one of his passions—but
not what he was hoping for. After passing it around to the
other members of the crew, Hiebert put it in a baggie, numbered
it, and went back to work.
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