Silk Road Lecture, Stanford University

"The Mongolian Altai Inventory Project: a Tale of Inquiry and Good Fortune"

• by Esther Jacobson-Tepfer,Maude I. Kerns Professor Emeritus of Asian Art, University of Oregon


• May 19 (Thursday), 7:30 p.m.School of Education, Room 206Stanford University


• This talk will present the course of a project that took 18 years of field work from inception to completion. Within the Altai Mountains of northwest Mongolia, the subject of our inquiry was surface archaeology--rock art, altars, burial mounds, and standing stones--covering a period of more than 12,000 years. The world we discovered and were the first to extensively map and publish lay on the northern boundaries of the Silk Road, in a remote and mountainous region between Central and North Asia.


• Dr. Jacobson-Tepfer has published eight books, including Archaeology and Landscape in the Mongolian Altai: an Atlas, The Art of the Scythians: The Interpenetration of Cultures at the Edge of the Hellenic World, The Deer-Goddess of Ancient Siberia, and Burial Ritual, Gender, and Status in the Late Bronze-Early Iron Age. She is a specialist on rock art of Mongolia.


• Sponsored by the Silkroad Foundation, Center for East Asian Studies, and Center for East European and Eurasian Studies