Swāt Archaeology – From Tucci to the Present

The present volume introduces the first English translation of Tucci’s book La Via dello Swat to scholars and other interested readers. Intended to be an agile and updated text, it also includes Tucci’s Travels of Tibetan Pilgrims, published in 1940, and two notes. The first on the itinerary of one of the two pilgrims, sTag ts’aṅ ras pa and Orgyan pa, which includes thee identifications provided by Tucci in 1971 and 1977. The second note deals with a toponym in the Tibetan Blue Annals, Vajrasthāna/Vajirasthāna, which has now been identified as Barikot. We chose the text of the 1978 second edition of La Via dello Swat because it offers Tucci’s very first impressions and it includes his evaluation of the first 20 years of excavations; for the illustrative material, instead, we preferred the photos Tucci had chosen for the first edition in 1963. Here, Tucci’s text is followed by a substantial article that illustrates all that has become known through seventy years of continuous excavation by the Italian Archaeological Mission. The experienced reader will note that we chose not to include Tucci’s seminal article ‘On Swāt. The Dards and connected problems’ (1977). The reason is that it is a well-known text, available both in print (it has been reprinted two times) and online. This volume is published in the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the Italian Archaeological Mission in Pakistan founded by Giuseppe Tucci in 1955.