Professor Boris Marshak, distinguished curator at the Hermitage, St. Petersburg, has directed excavations at the Medieval Eurasian Settlement of Panjikent for many years.

The 52 years of excavations of Panjikent (a Sogdian town of 5-8 centuries) have given an opportunity to reconstruct the newly discovered Sogdian civilization in its integrity and its various aspects such as domestic, palatial and temple architecture, fortifications, handicrafts, trade, visual arts, religious life, folklore and secular literature (heroic and fairy tales, fables, parables).  Emphasis on the comparative study of the cultures of Sogdia, Bactria, and Iran, Serindia, their common and individual characteristics.  Panjikent, situated in the Zarafshan valley not far from Samarkand, as the most investigated early medieval city in Eurasia.  Its exploration as a school of methodology of the historical interpretation of the archaeological data which helps to show the typical features of the culture through their individual manifestations, demonstrating how the cultural determination did not exclude some kind of the individual freedom in the Sogdian society.