8th US/ICOMOS International Symposium

John C Hurd. B.Sc. Dip Cons. FIAAS.

ICOMOS International Scientific Committee for the Study and Conservation of

Earthen Architectural Heritage.

Personal Contact details:

Email. hurdcon@yahoo.co.uk
Mail: 3 Magdalen Close, North Lane, Swaby, Alford, Lincolnshire, UK.
UK. Tel. 0044[0]1507 480 626.

Towards a Regime for the Sustainable, Ethical and Regionally Maintainable

Conservation, Presentation and Interpretation of Large Archaeological Sites on
the Ancient Silk Roads of Central Asia.

Introduction
Across the world are hundreds of huge archaeological sites in a better or worse state
of preservation.
This paper explores site interpretation at a very fundamental level. It will draw a
sketch of cultural conditions in the region which it covers, Central Asia, and describe
an attempt to achieve a strong didactic message, using a textural language and a
regional protocol, to help with the definition of ‘separate places’.
In terms of the topic of this Symposium, the paper explores, first impact.
The speaker will draw from examples on the Silk Roads of Central Asia, Otrar Oasis,
ancient ‘Farab’, in Kazakhstan, Sauran, 14/15 th, Century city near Turkestan, and
three Cities in the Chui Valley in Kyrgyzstan, Krasnaya Rechka, ancient Navikat, Ak
Beshim, ancient Balasagun and Burana, ancient Suyab.

Otrar Tobe, Main Citadel. S. Kazakhstan.

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Sauran, 3 Miles of adobe walls, near Turkestan .

Sauran. Detail of adobe defensive wall.

Reclining Buddha, earth sculpture, Buddhist Temple II, Krasnaya Rechka

ancient ‘Navikat’

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10th Century Karakhanid tower, Burana, ancient ‘Suyab’ Graham.1915.

The sites pictured adequately demonstrate many of the problems in the conservation
of earth cities in Central Asia. They are all sites that have received a great deal of
archaeological excavation and research but almost no site conservation during the
Soviet period. Objects have been conserved and often very well, but it may be
regretted that major finds, including the earth formed reclining Buddha from Krasnaya
Rechka, have remained at the Hermitage in St. Petersburg.

Since perestroika, the regional stakeholders trying to improve the status of the
monuments from the World Heritage tentative list have been confronted by a
constantly developing and changing financial and political situation tending to
instability in the discipline of the preservation and interpretation of historic sites.
Central Asia has first class conservation scientists, but their work is severely limited
within changing priorities for the exploitation of cultural reserves.

Geographic, demographic and cultural setting.

The region East of the Caspian, south of the Aral Sea, west of the Tien Shan
Mountains, (the old Soviet border with China) and North of the Oxus has been known
under several names. Semirechie, and Trans-Oxiania perhaps the best known.

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The cities referred to in this paper, founded largely in the 3rd Century before the
Christian era or later, can be characterised by the influence and activities of the Silk
Roads, running East and West across the region, and by the main nomadic routes
running North and South. Frequently crossed by armies, often brutally conquered,
with huge religious, cultural, artistic and scientific diversity, attracted by the lively flow
of activity and ideas generated on these International trade routes. The region gave
birth to a gifted line of sons including the renowned Islamic philosopher, astronomer
and Scientist, Al Farabi and the Sufi Master Hodja Achmet Yassavi with many others.
Major military disruptions during and after the conquest by Genghis Khan in the 13
and 14th Century led to most of the cities falling into severe decline or being utterly
destroyed and never repopulated. The other great military activities in the region are
marked by the rise of Timur Leng (Tamerlaine) and the renaissance that Timur’s
power generated, in the 15th Century and by the 18th Century, and later, Russian
Imperial expansion, followed by the culturally influential, Soviet Union.

The true culture of the various Turkic speaking nations that populate Central Asia, is
still emerging from a Soviet past which did not encourage cultural identity, ethnic
groups were Imported and exported especially in the Stalin era.

The lingua Franca of the former Soviet Socialist Republics of Uzbekistan,

Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tadjikistan is now Russian, but still very much alive are
a group of Turkic languages lately elevated in importance and in some cases
becoming once again the language of government.
There remained in Trans-Oxiania, throughout the Russian Imperial and Soyuz Soviet
periods a deep tribal longing to establish a separate and regional Turkic cultural
identity, in part through a shared Islamic heritage.

This Turkman heart existed as a quasi-underground movement for over a Century.

The ‘original’ inhabitants of the region, evolved from a series of invasions and
population movements in early times, can be divided into nomadic and settled
groups. During the Soviet period a myth and mental reaching towards the romance of
nomadic origins has to some extent replaced an authentic history of huge cities in
places stretching like a linear chain along the branches of the silk roads, and with
nomadism contacting that settlement in the cities described here. The ‘originals’
divide by tradition into three ‘Hordes’, the First Horde, the Golden Horde and the
‘modern’ horde, when strangers meet in the region, the family origin and horde are
established early on.

Intertwined with this rich tradition, still in the process of rediscovery, are the remnants
of the Russian Empire together with the hundreds of nations imported during the
Soviet era to support huge agricultural plans, green deserts, and the industrial
infrastructure of the collectives, all set in a background of the extraordinarily equal
distribution of resources and production among the member states. In Kakakhstan
there are said to exist some 120 ethnic tribes, Germans, Greeks, Chechens,
Armenians, Jews, Koreans, Chinese, Siberian, Kipchaks, Uigurs, Cossacks, Tatars,
Russians and so on.

All these groups call themselves ‘Kazakh’ and indeed that is what they are, Kazakh
patriots who maintain a thin connection with their own cultural roots and often have
‘far away’ eyes. Many of them had no choice but to emigrate and work in the
collectives and they are now 3rd and 4th generation Kazakhs. However, in fact, few
except the three Hordes understand the local languages and traditions.

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Social Changes.
The states are very tolerant of the ethnic diversity, within the context of States,
becoming independent Republics, with an intense need to rediscover and re-define a
unique cultural source and inspiration, shared only by the originals; a difficult
transition.

Within this transition is the reintroduction of freedom of worship. The Hordes belong,
for the most part, to a soft but devout Islamic tradition, extended by various branches
of Sufism and to a growing extent shamanism which, through the application of small
but strong household and community rituals kept the tradition alive, which in liberal
times is a strong uniting factor amongst people of many original beliefs. The Russian
Orthodox Church is also in the ascendant as is the reintroduction of Synagogues. In
Central Asia one may see Hare Krishna groups chanting along the roads and I have
often been invited to join panoply of odd sects and even séances on the ancient
sites. When ill or injured, I have always been taken to the Shaman first. The
treatments have often been weird, but reassuringly effective.

Tourism and visitors.

In the Confederation of Independent States the ancient sites become semi
Islamic/Sufi/pagan/Shamanistic places of pilgrimage as well as an educational and
tourist environment. For most regional tourists the expectation is for fun and
adventure, getting in touch with a wilder spirit in a dimly remembered history.

Altyn Tobe (Kazakhstan): damage caused to earthen walls by visitors.

A proportion of visitors walk or even ride horses over the archaeology, light fires,
sing, dance, drink, sleep over, enact various ceremonies including shamanistic
marriage celebration sitting easily beside the Civil and Islamic ceremony, and pursue
a very separate cultural celebration. Site Guardians are hard pressed.
In International legislation and in the Charters with which we inform our judgements,
there is no acceptance for the need of ordinary people to visit ancient sites and to
experience the ‘festival’ that this has always demanded. Druids are unable to visit
Stonehenge and in the same way, this profound need for cultural festival in the
steppes, is becoming viewed as a ‘problem’. How are we able to allow these sides of

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our cultural source to find expression within the need to closely protect the remains
that define these ancient places?

Part of the attraction of the tobes [mounds] is their dramatic statement as raised
places within the endless flatness of the Kazakh Steppe.

This dramatic architectural effort, of massive proportion, together with the

infrastructure and irrigation required to support these platform building, hydraulic
communities does by its environmental setting, pull in the imagination of the visitor,
and this can become an early advantage to respect, interpretation and
understanding.

Problems and Solutions.

Confronting these problems has lead a UNESCO, Division of Cultural Heritage
conservation team to evolve a philosophy of conservation aimed at maximum long-
term preservation through careful backfilling while also leaving windows in the
excavated contexts to satisfy, educational, didactic and Tourism needs.

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Earth arches, Ak Beshim, Nestorian Christian Complex.

‘Wrapping’ the earth arches in geotextile carefully selected for porosity (see
previous picture).

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Backfilling with soft sand protecting immediate surface and original excavated
material replaced.
In the Central Asian contexts, tangible structures are very vulnerable to deterioration.
Covering remains with a shelter structure or reburial may be the best means to
provide a satisfactory result. Both recovering and the use of shelter structures require
great caution both in design and in function and maintenance.

Another important philosophical and ethical question in general to Central Asia is that
of the spoils produced by intensive excavation activity and which now remain
scattered across the sites. Normally these will have been used for backfilling or
removed completely from an archaeological zone, but in this case they have not and
remain a large and unsightly problem. In Otrar tobe it is estimated that the volume of
spoil material totals in excess of one thousand tonnes.

In a city like the 200 square kilometre Otrar Oasis, on an important ancient route
lying within the changing meanderings of the Syr Darya river to it’s eventual
destination in the Aral Sea, seven citadels and numerous other areas have been
excavated in the last 80 years.

In the years that have followed these intensive Soviet scientific investigations, the
excavated areas are slowly melting back into the landscape.

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Within the budgets available for conservation projects it will, for the foreseeable
future be impossible to conserve most of the excavated contexts within these sites.

The UNESCO team is headed by Francis Childe of UNESCO Division of Cultural

Heritage, Paris and directed by Prof. Michael Jansen from the University of Aachen
(WRTH), with John Hurd (UK), as senior conservation consultant. Dr. Enrico Fodde
(Italy), Site scientist and laboratory trainer together with Tarcis Stevens (Belgium),
Topographer and documentation trainer, share the job of site direction. Yuri Peshkov
(Kaz.) UNESCO, Almaty is the regional co-ordinator. In each country local experts
and international consultants support this core team. Funding is generously supplied,
through UNESCO, by the Japanese Funds in Trust.

Otrar Tobe, Kazakhstan. Topographical survey. Citadel and Shakristan,

purple, outer defensive ramparts and Rabat, black. WRTH. Stevens.

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Large-scale surveying is achieved through the use of total station surveys, operations
trained on site over a four-year period, together with air photography and GPS.
Limited geophysical surveys by magnetometer and by resistivity meters are also
conducted in areas surrounding the excavated windows, conserved for visitors.
Archaeological surveys of this detail had not occurred in Kazakh sites, but are now
being applied, with eight archaeological surveyors trained.

Two field laboratories have been set up in Otrar (Kazakhstan) and Krasnaya Rechka
(Kyrgyzstan). In both countries training is carried out with national and regional
experts. The scope for the laboratories is to be a reference point not only for the site
analysis, conservation and for the selection of repair materials, but also in terms of
regional capacity building.

Krasnaya Rechka (Kyrgyzstan). Training session in the field laboratory

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 Later Mosque, Otrar Tobe, Kazakhstan: figure showing grouping of
granulometry curves of mud mortar samples as analysed in the field
laboratory. Fodde.

After assembly of historic archives a large-scale total station topographical survey is

completed and all excavated areas are documented in found state. Windows are
then selected for conservation and all other excavated structures which are unstable
and at risk are carefully separated, stabilised and backfilled. This to some extent
returns the view of these cities to a series of earthworks and canals within the Steppe
landscape.

Special areas of focus are left in the excavated state and receive detailed
conservation attention which, in the extraordinarily harsh Steppe environment, further
worsened by global climate change, may involve shelter structures both as protective
covers or as local climate baffles.

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Access.
A safe and reversible visitor path is then established to lead the visitor from window
to window, and the route is supplied with didactic signage, focussed on each
individual window. This signage also contains material on reburied contexts each
side of the path using historic plans, images and interpretation juxtaposed with
modern documentation.

The windows are selected to represent different periods of activity and at different
social strata. In Otrar, six large windows have been selected, part of the city wall, a
Mosque, a Palace, a bathhouse, a pottery and it’s domestic ensemble and a
residential block.

Presentation and interpretation.

Historically, Soviet interpretation of Central Asian sites stressed the militaristic nature
of the Hordes. Since independence, the interpretation of forms and appearance of
the cities has wandered even further towards a perception of a strong/cruel Central
Asian history, with otherwise learned books offering huge, quasi Soviet visualisations
of historic elevations where every door is four meters high made of iron and every
wall head crenellated. It is politically acceptable to advance the ideas of nomadic
warriors, always victorious, tough and Nationally strong.

Within the context of the windows efforts are made to present the site to all visitors,
regardless of origin and comprehension of written language or maps, in a way that
evolves a clearly recognisable sensual and textural language within the presentation
of each window and across the range of windows available for inspection and view.

Adobe retaining wall. Otrar.

This textural language defines floors [excavated levels and found floor levels],
retaining walls, reconstruction and historic fabric. The textural language is common to
all windows within a given site, but regional similarities of textural language are
encouraged.

In Otrar for instance, a general language of floors and levels with a language of
distinctive local gravels with under-drainage and a geotextile (Typar 32) separation
layer.

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Excavated base layer marked by gravel, Spread footing and original floor level
visible above. Later Mosque, Otrar.

For the walls required to manage and retain excavated ‘cliffs’ within the fragile loess
clay environment, a sacrificial but durable plaster is applied with vertical finger
strokes, all visitor retaining walls are similarly textured and this defines the language
of new wall construction. The added value lies in the indicator of maintenance. When
the vertical lines erode away, it is time to reapply.

‘Finger-stroke’ Texture to define new visitor or site retaining wall.

This indicator is an improvement on Calendar maintenance, as it will respond to

softer and harder periods of environmental conditions. The texture also has the
practical function of leading rainwater to ground and by resisting the formation of
preferential flow channels.

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The language then extends to the conserved monuments, which in the harsh
environment already described almost always require shelter coats to ensure
survival. This textural language defines without further explanation, what is
authentic, what is protective and what is didactic within the levels of interpretation
of the windows.

Regional and common site textural language contributes to the discipline of visitors
on regional tourist and pilgrimage routes. They involve the visitor in a discrete
process of recognition of the separateness of the site from the outside world, and
encourage the need for appreciation through interpretation within the mindset of any
visitor who recognises and responds to the message of the theme within regional
sites.

The didactic information presentations and signage is then placed on top of this basic
and experiential didactic foundation, and the sites then become open to interpretation
by a wide audience in more or less detail.

The UNESCO Division of Cultural Heritage, Central Asia consultant’s team.

Outputs.
The technical, political and practical importance of leaving only windows lies in the
fact that the backfilled areas will remain stable at low maintenance for long periods
while the size and frequency of windows can be tailored to present a sustainable
target for maintenance within the limitations of fluctuating manpower and budget in
any given region or Country. As in museums, only a small part of the collection is
exhibited, the remainder becomes the reserve collection, available as required.

Each Culture has its own standards and purposes for interpretation of sites and the
establishment of windows allows for local interpretation while leaving the mass of
archaeological material buried for reinterpretation and more sophisticated research in
future generations. Six large windows are to be left open onto the history of the huge

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Otrar Tobe. The maintenance of these windows will stretch the capacity of local
cultural reserve staff and will be flexible enough to be increased or reduced
according to the capacity for response over the next few years.

The UNESCO project has encouraged and facilitated master planning for all of the
city sites, and a part of this process is site management planning with all its
advantages towards good working procedures.

Regional capacity has been increased and training has been given in Planning,
Philosophy, ethics, documentation, Laboratory analysis, synthesis of results and in
conservation techniques. This training has been achieved by working with regional
experts on site, over a five-year period, and at workshops and master-classes
including a formal Regional Training Workshop.

Fin. John Hurd. 2005.

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