PROF Valeria Fiorani Piacentini is a member of the Board of Directors of the Research Centre on the Southern System and Wider Mediterranean.

She has been part of many archeological missions and is an effective member of the joint Pakistan-FrenchItalian historical and archeological research project at Banbhore. These days she is in Karachi to participate in a three-day workshop beginning on Nov 9 (today) titled `When history, archaeology and science meet to give life and voice to monuments and archeological evidence` organised by the Italian consulate general and the provincial ministry of culture.

Peerzada Salman sat down with Prof Piacentini to elicit her views on the ever expanding discipline of archaeology: Excerpts follow: Q: What is the significance of archaeology? A: Archaeology is important as long as it works with history. It is a methodological approach. It provides material evidence and a lot of questions which can be solved only with the support of other sciences.

Q: Why is it important for the common man? A: It is important for the common man because it is your own history, our .

history. We know that the Greeks were here but Greece`s is also our culture. i Aristotle, Plato, the Hellenistic world, the south of Italy is Greek. So it is acommon cultural heritage. Rome and the Roman Empire did not come directly as conquerors but came because they had trading links with China and the continent, the hinterland and Arabia. Is trade as important as conquests? May be more because trade can provide with precious cultural links philosophical, literary, religious links.

Q: How does an archaeologist correlate the international and local aspects of a historic site? A: That has to be studied at the site.

When we were in Makran, we knewabout a civilisation because the material (found there) was spread all over the Arabian Sea, the Gulf, the Gulf of Oman, Egypt and Syria. Where was this material coming from? Here science comes in. They studied the pottery and realised that they were not manufactured at this place so the beautiful potteries were imported.

They were coming from somewhere.

We know about Harappa. And this material was pre-Harappa, 5th millennium BC. You have in Makran one of the oldest civilisations trading with Egypt and the most ancient civilisations of the Mediterranean. You can imagine what kind of fleet they had, roads they made.

Q: What`s so special about Banbhore? A: While I was working in Makran I came to Karachi for a few days. We used to go to Makli and Banbhore. I was impressed by the beauty of this (Banbhore) site. In Makran we came across Hellenistic, Islamic and Sasanian periods. The same we have in Banbhore. We saw all of that in the museum there. There was a script by F. A. Khan. He did wonderful work in Banbhore, and his reports were the only systematic reports on the site.

Very scientific excavations were carried out there. Unfortunately, he passed away and could publish very lit tle about the site. Therefore for us who were working in Makran the museum was a point to refer to for chronologles, information and architectural data.

What took me, personally, to Banbhore was that in Makran we found pre-historic and proto-historic harbours. We also found land trade route. So where did this wealth of luxury goods (pottery, jewelry) come from? Which harbour town they were exported through? Eastward we had Banbhore and westward Charbahar in Iran. I had no access to Charbahar. We figured that land routes crossed Makran, so the goods might have been exported through Banbhore.

And Banbhore could have had the double role of market production and redistribution. I`m pretty sure that the historic harbour of Daybul is nowadays Banbhore.

Q: Some Pakistani archaeologists and historians are sure that the romantic folk tale of Sassi and Pannu took place in Banbhore. What`s your take on it? A: It could be the case, as Marc Bloch in one of his beautiful books writes, `Never dismiss oral tradition because behind the veil of myth and legends there is always a kernel of historical reality.` So my approach is to always investigate tradition as a source of information.

Q: How would you differentiate between archaeologists and historians? A: The historian needs the archaeologist, the archaeologist needs the historian, and both need science. This means we need to study the environment in order to understand the patterns of peopling (how they came, settled etc).

Q: What`s the significance of the seminar that`s being held (from today)? A: It will help the new generation and scholars of Pakistan to understand the different aspects of archaeology.