Research Interests:  Field Research in Daghestan

For a second season, from mid-June to mid-July 1995, Professor Stronach took a team from U.C. Berkeley to join in the American-Russian excavations at the Bronze Age site of Velikent in Daghestan. Together with other members of the Velikent Expedition he also began to make a detailed study of one of Daghestan's more intriguing early monuments: a long defensive wall constructed of distinctive Sasanian stone masonry, which appears to have been erected by Khosrow I (531-579 A.D.) in order to protect Sasanian Iran from the depredations of the Huns and other nomadic peoples that were then present in the northern Caucasus. The extant remains of this formidable barrier run inland from the coastal fortress of Derbent on the Caspian Sea for a distance of 46 km and certain of the rectangular stone forts on the line of the wall still stand to heights of 7 meters and more.

In August 1994, Prof. Stronach was the McNichol Lecturer in Near Eastern Archaeology at the University of Sydney and more recently, on July 18th, he lectured at the British Museum on "Achaemenid Archaeology on the Iranian Plateau".

Last modified 4 February 2000.