The Great Silk Road Survey

Overview

We stand before an historic opportunity. For nominal cost, a systematic assessment of archaeological survey and salvage requirements along the proposed Baku-Ceyhan Caspian-to-Mediterranean pipeline will serve as a template for many trans-Eurasian infrastructure projects. This route, and any foreseeable subsequent route, lies in areas that, due to security constraints and political sensitivities, have been largely closed to western archaeological survey and excavation. Fortuitously, many of the activities necessary for pipeline construction, with minimal adaptation and participation by small archaeological survey teams, can produce data of unprecedented proportion and importance to world heritage preservation. With proper collection, storage, and sharing protocols, this data will serve an international community of archaeologists, paleozoologists, paleobotanists, paleoclimatologists, foresters, and agronomists for a generation to come.

Executive Summary

Protocols for World Cultural Heritage Preservation During Multinational Pipeline Construction

At the 1999 European Economic Summit, after nearly a decade of proposals, assessments, disputes, starts, and eleventh-hour stalls, an historic agreement was finally signed. The Baku-Ceyhan accord among the United States, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan, pledging to construct a main export pipeline (MEP) to deliver Caspian oil to western markets, has been lauded a success in "pipeline diplomacy." Opting for a route driven by strategic needs, environmental concerns, and security considerations, the signatories have agreed to pump oil over a 1,100 mile route from Baku, Azerbaijan, northeast to the Republic of Georgia, then southwest across Turkey to the Mediterranean tanker port of Ceyhan. The route was chosen to protect western markets—the cheapest route, from the Caspian south through Iran, was deemed vulnerable to political manipulation. It was chosen to protect the pipeline itself—contested areas were avoided. It was chosen to protect the environment—terminals on the Black Sea would have required heavy tanker traffic to pass Istanbul through the fragile Bosphorus straits. It was chosen to protect the peace, with an aim of uniting, stabilizing, and anchoring new nations along the ancient trade route known as the Great Silk Road.

Here, along the pipeline-to-be, lies some of Eurasia's—indeed, the world's—oldest, and richest, archeological heritage. Here wine may have been first invented. Apples first domesticated. Tin first alloyed with copper to invent bronze. Here emissaries of the world's oldest urban civilizations first encountered nomads of the Eurasian steppe. Here chieftains adorned with gold were entombed with wagons, horses, felts, and servants while entire cities bloomed on river fords, a thousand years before Homer wrote of Troy. Here Hurrian, Assyrian, Hittite, and Urartian civilizations rose and declined. Alexander marched this way en route to India. Here, Persia opened the great Silk Road and struggled with Rome to hold it. Judaism, Christianity, Zoroastrianism, and finally Islam swept through and thrived in the region's cities. The Mongols incorporated this region into their empire. The Ottoman Turks ruled here for nearly half a millennium. And along this route, "the Great Game" was played, with British advisors supporting Turkish troops in defending Erzerum and Kars from Russian imperial advance.

Yet a final protection—of the rich cultural heritage, of equal value to the peoples along the route attempting to forge new national identities, and to the multinational world that will benefit from the pipeline's products—must also be afforded. And providing that protection is a problem that will require solution no matter what the route. For this pipeline, as a matter of United States policy, will be only the first of many Eurasian pipeline projects. Unlike national schemes traversing the frozen tundra of Alaska or Siberia, not only would any of these transect archaeologically rich corridors, but systematic recording and salvage of archaeological sites along them is complicated by the multinational nature of agreements governing their construction.

We view this state of affairs as an historic opportunity. This route, and any foreseeable subsequent route, lies in areas that, due to security constraints and political sensitivities, have been largely closed to archaeological excavation. What work has been done there by Soviet and regional archaeologists has been for the most part inaccessible to the West (and vice versa). Local specialists with great experience, but extremely limited budgets, have been unable to mount systematic survey expeditions.

Fortuitously, many of the activities necessary for pipeline construction, with minimal adaptation or with participation by archaeological survey teams, can generate samples and data that, if properly recorded and stored, will provide archaeologists a representative section of unprecedented proportion and importance. Indeed, it will provide invaluable information to a broad, interdisciplinary science community. Archaeologists, but paleozoologists, paleobotanists, paleoclimatologists, foresters, and agronomists would benefit equally. Thus, for nominal cost, as compared to the overall costs of the project (approximately $5 million, out of $2.4 billion, or .02 percent of cost), a systematic assessment of archaeological survey and salvage requirements along the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline will serve as a template for many projects to come.

We envision the project as a form of "pipeline diplomacy" in its own right. Assembling experts from the oil industry, international lending institutions, and the archaeological community (including specialists in national permitting and salvage operations) as well as technical advisors in remote sensing, digital storage and retrieval systems, and geologic survey operations, we intend to bring together a group of people to write workable, reusable protocols and best practices for archaeological and geomorphological survey. These could then be included as conditions of international lending agreements that subsidize multinational energy development (pipelines) and transportation, electrification, and telecommunications projects (highways, power lines, cable systems) that will surely follow.

Emphasis will be on creating "all stakeholder" collaborations that can standardize and leverage flexible in-kind contributions and ongoing actions with low cost inputs. For example, NASA might agree to provide free access to existing regional imagery and imagery products. Oil companies might agree to support salvage efforts by enabling archaeologists to accompany survey teams, collect samples, and record stratigraphy during excavation of pipeline footings; granting them access to remote sensing data, and soil cores; and allowing them to "piggy-back" on existing transport, food, lodging, medical support, and earth-moving operations at construction sites. To mount independent research expeditions to accomplish these tasks would be, for most archaeologists, a prohibitive undertaking. Yet, as an adjunct to existing operations, their cost would be minor.

Similarly, local, regional, and national museums might commit to common standards for artifact recording, conservation, and storage, and to protocols of mutual accessibility, including agreements regarding international loan and display. Major research institutions such as California Digital Library, the National Partnership for Advanced Computing Infrastructure/San Diego Supercomputer Center could provide common standards for digital image and data recording, making results accessible to the international community. Such scholarly agreements can open local, national, regional, and international conversation about the relation of the Great Silk Road of the past to the grand energy, transportation, and telecommunications projects of the future. Given the importance of archaeological heritage in nation-building, we envision a significant media and outreach component for the project.

The University of California is uniquely situated to incubate and manage a project of this scope. World-class experts in archaeological survey and salvage operations with strong institutional relations in Turkey and the Caucasus, experts in GIS and imagery interpretation applied to archaeological contexts, and a national award-winner for cultural resource management, are members of the faculties of the nine campuses of the University of California system. Petroleum exploration geologists, with consulting roles to Unocal, a California member of the BP-Amoco-SOCAR (State Oil Company of the Azerbaijan Republic) oil-producing consortium and other oil producers that will use the route, are available at San Diego State University (SDSU) and the UCSD Scripps Institution of Oceanography. The San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) Scientific Visualization Center boasts remarkable accomplishments in re-creating ancient three-dimensional landscapes. SDSC also supports the California Digital Library's (CDL) Cuneiform Project (UC Los Angeles) and Alexandria Digital Library (UC Santa Barbara), both at the forefront of developing artifact image cataloguing and retrieval systems. CDL researchers are pioneering development of a "digital gazetteer" of cultural, art historical, map, and historical data for the greater Silk Road, including the Caucasus. Former IGCC Research Director for International Environmental Policy Richard Carson led a World Cultural Heritage project that established international lending institution protocols for historic preservation in the ancient city of Fez, Morocco. These protocols now serve as a model for World Bank conservation efforts in World Heritage cities. IGCC's new Research Director for International Environmental Policy, Jeffrey Vincent, has many years' experience in central Asia.

Pipeline backers are now conducting detailed route engineering in a multimillion-dollar planning investment that will make the final determination of pipeline viability. A new batch of Caspian oil will be ready by 2004. The Overseas Private Investment Corporation and the Export-Import Bank have provided $500 million in loan guarantees. Turkey has announced that it will pay any overruns on the expected $1.4 billion construction costs in its territories. Political will and economic forces are converging. We face an historic opportunity to discover and preserve an unprecedented segment of world history. We must act quickly.

Figures

Actual and Potential Pipeline Routes along the Western Leg of the Great Silk Road

Figure 1: Existing and Potential Oil Export Routes from the Caspian Basin
Source: U.S. Energy Administration Information

Figure 2: Current and Proposed Pipelines in the Black Sea-Caspian Sea-Mediterranean Region
Source: Turkish Energy Commission

Figure 3: Selected Oil Infrastructure in the Caspian Basin
Source: U.S. Energy Administration Information

Figure 4: Physical and Political Geography of the Caspian Basin
Source: National Geographic Society

Figure 5: Caucasus Terrain Elevation Map
Source: First Exchange Corporation

Figure 6: Proposed Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan MEP Route, Subject to Detailed Engineering
Source: British Petroleum

Figure 7: Proposed BTC MEP Route within Turkey, Subject to Detailed Engineering
Source: British Petroleum

Figure 8: The BTC MEP Region, 1828

Figure 9: The BTC MEP Region, 1835

Figure 10: Kura Delta (Azerbaijan) Oilfields