Undergraduate Silk Roads Summer Research Project

Anmona is working alongside King’s Fellow Katie Campbell on a project looking at the effects of the Mongol conquest on Central Asian cities, specifically concentrating on the city of Otrar in present-day Kazakhstan. “Otrar was abandoned in the 1800s but during the Middle Ages it was quite a strategic city with a population of more than 20,000. Previous archaeological work has uncovered a lot of material evidence of vases and kilns from that period which give us a good idea of where people lived and worked within the city.

“To help with future excavations, I’ve been creating a database of diagrams and maps from Soviet-era archaeology books about the city, and geo- referencing these directly onto modern satellite imagery using open-source software called QGIS.”

Overlaying the images has allowed Anmona to make use of her photo editing skills, but there are other challenges that are proving more difficult: “The hardest part is understanding the Cyrillic; I can now identify some key words like ‘horizon’ or ‘excavation’, but it would be a lot easier if I knew more Russian!”

Anmona will present her findings alongside the other students on the programme at a showcase event in October, but how has she found the experience so far? “I’m really enjoying the computational side of it; my degree so far has mostly been spent reading, taking notes and writing essays, but the opportunity to work with diagrams, geospatial software and material culture has been really exciting – it adds another dimension to my understanding of the period and is something I’m hoping to do more of as I move into my third year. Another important part of the project is the chance to talk to Katie about the academic process, the hurdles she’s faced as a researcher, and whether it might be a possible future for me as well.”