As the morning sun catches the tops of the turquoise domes of the city of Bukhara, and before the fierce heat of a cloudless Central Asian summer day takes hold, New York University archaeologist Sören Stark and his team are already at work. When someone shouts from deep in an excavation trench, Stark hops down steep steps cut into the earth, descending past fine, light-colored soil to the dark, damp dirt below. At the bottom of the trench, excavator Husniddin Rakhmonov whisks a brush along the outline of a round, reddish object. After a few minutes of digging, he scoops the artifact up with a trowel. Some 2,000 years after it was lost or abandoned by its owner, the head of a terracotta figurine falls neatly into his hand.
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