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LMH: Did you ever find any skeletons during this work? Prof. Hiebert: Burials were very formal- ly made. They would build a mud brick structure, construct a little house and put ceramics such as some of these pots here. Sometimes they would leave a ritual last dinner in with the burials. These have taught us a great deal about the people. We haven't found as many burials as we have found along the Indus River or in Mesopotamia, but we've found enough to give us an interesting idea about the funere- al rituals and the afterlife that the Central Asians thought [exists]. LMH: Is it possible there are fewer skeletons because they might have used a form of cremation and burned them? Prof. Hiebert: That certainly is possible. There is a ritual in ancient Persian Zoroastrianism that we think would have been an early form in the desert oases, that involved leaving the bodies out to return to nature. Thin ceramic vase on the left is c. 2500 BC. On the right is the oldest pottery shard yet found in the Central Asian dig, c. 3500 BC. (Photograph by Linda Moulton Howe) nature. some people wouldn't believe us. Some people did believe us. Some people have challenged the origins of this. Some people have simply ignored this. What we are really seeing, now from the 1980s to the beginning of the 21st century, is finally an under- standing that this area really takes its place among the great civili- sations of the old world. LMH: So ina desert climate, they would have been wind- blasted and disintegrated? Prof. Hiebert: Yes, so the burial record might not reflect the size of the population exactly. LMH: And it would be hard, then, for archaeologists today to know for certain what that population size was in Central Asia? Prof. Hiebert: Yes; there are some things we can guess at but we are never going to be able to determine, such as the exact size of the population. LMH: What has surprised you the most from the early 1980s to now? Prof. Hiebert: Well, I think the thing that surprised me most was actual- ly not the archaeo- logical remains themselves, but the reactions of our col- leagues. As we began to peel back the lawyers and reveal civilisation in the desert oases, "Bone tube" carved with stylised head, c. 2000 BC. (Photograph by Linda Moulton Howe) LMH: So, you are saying that your own scientist colleagues were not open-minded to this discovery? Prof. Hiebert: I don't know if they weren't open-minded. They hadn't taken into consideration this new area of the world. And the more we work on it, the more we realise that this is an important part of the world. It was an important part of the world in the past and it was directly connected with the other areas. As we work more on this and create a better understanding of it in English and Western languages, the more we are getting the idea out that we have a large Bronze Age civilisation in Central Asia. LMH: Could there have been in the Celtic world, up in the British Isles, building of megalithic stone circles that pre-dated all of this? Prof. Hiebert: This question of the connection between the Celtic world and the ancient Near East is one that's been suggest- ed as much as 100 years ago. The erection of these large stone megalithic monuments has parallels in the Black Sea world where there are megalithic tombs there and further west in the Mediterranean and perhaps even on the Eurasian steppes. Nevertheless, to consider those monumental works part of a civilisation, they wouldn't fall into the same category as the types of societies we're talking about in Central Asia or Mesopotamia because the builders of the monoliths really didn't have...we don't have evidence of settled farming or urban life; no cities, none of the domestic animals and plants. It's a type of complexity that is very different from Central Asia, the Indus Valley or China. So, I think to be open-minded we have to allow ourselves to understand the deep complexity of building monolithic monuments, but realise that diversity is also something very NEXUS +59 Continued on page 89 AUGUST - SEPTEMBER 2001 www.nexusmagazine.com