A New Phase of Research on the Protohistoric Graves of Swat valley, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan

The graveyards of the 2nd-1st millennia BCE in Swat valley were identied as an importantarchaeological evidence in the early 1960s by the Italian explorer and orientalist Giuseppe Tucci (see Ghani-ur-Rahman and Olivieri 2011). Soon afterwards, Italian archaeologists excavated hundreds of protohistoric graves at Katelai, Loebanr I, Butkara II (Castaldi 1968; Silvi Antoniniand Stacul 1972; Stacul 1975; Salvatori 1975) and at other minor sites (Tusa 1981). The excavatorsconcluded that funerary processes included single and double burials, multiple and/or collective graves, and the co-occurrence of cremation and inhumation rituals. On the basis of typological and stratigraphical evidence, the cemeteries seem to havebeen used in three main phases (Stacul 1966): rst between 1400 and 1100 BCE (lateBronze Age), then between 1100 and 700 BCE (early Iron Age) and nally between 700 and400 BCE (middle-late Iron Age) (see also Müller-Karpe 1983; Vinogradova 2001). The IsMEOteams dug few other protohistoric graves in Buner, Chitral and Indus Kohistan (Stacul 1967;Tusa 1981; Ghani-ur-Rahman and Olivieri 2011, 321-327), while Pakistani archaeologists dugother sites in Dir and in the Peshawar plain (Dani et al. 1968; Dani 1978; Khan G.M. 1979;Khan S.N. 1993) and, during the last decade, also surveyed and excavated some sites in Chitral with the collaboration of British archaeologists (Ali et al. 2002, 2008). In 1987, Giorgio Staculpublished the results of a major stratigraphic trench at the rock shelter of Ghalegai in the middleSwat valley, inserting the three phases of the cemeteries as Periods V, VI, VII in a hypotheticallonger occupation sequence stretching, after a limited series of 14C datings, from about 3000 BCEto the Islamic period (see also Stacul 1969, 1978-1979)