Archaeology in Swat

Activities and Challenges of the Italian Mission, 2000-2010

Abstract

It is a well known fact that the Italian Archaeological Mission was the first foreign archaeological permanent Institution in the newly constituted Pakistan. Lead by IsIAO (Istituto Italiano per l' Africa e l'Oriente, the former IsMEO) it is also the longest standing foreign mission in South-West Asia, after the French mission in Afghanistan.

The activities of the Mission in Swat, first directed by Giuseppe Tucci, then by Domenico Faccenna, Maurizio Taddei, Pierfrancesco Callieri and the author of these notes, can be sub-divided in four major phases.

From 1956 to 1966 the Mission focused on the archaeology of the Buddhist sacred areas and monasteries, with three excavations which can be still considered the best documented and published projects in Gandharan archaeology: Butkara, Panr and Saidu Sharif. From 1967 to 1983 the focus turned towards Prehistory and Protohistory. In 1966, while the excavation at Saidu Sharif-I was going on, other teams started large scale excavations of the Late Bronze-Iron Age graveyards of Katelai, Gogdara 3, Butkara 2 and Loebanr. Soon after, the excavation at the rock shelter of Ghalegai and at the protohistoric settlements of Aligrama and Barikot. After the end of the Ghalegai works, Giorgio Stacul published the first sequence of protohistoric Swat from Neolithic to the Iron Age.