Sören Stark

List of publications

Professor Stark received his PhD in 2005 from Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg. Before joining the faculty of ISAW, he was Junior Fellow at the Excellence Cluster TOPOI and teaching at the Freie Universität in Berlin.

Professor Stark has close to two decades of experience in conducting and directing archaeological fieldwork in Central Asia. Between 2005 and 2007 he conducted and co-directed archaeological surveys and excavations in Northern Tajikistan on Bronze and Iron age petroglyphs, Iron age kurgans, and Samanid-Qarakhanid period mountain settlements; from 2011 to 2015 he codirected surveys and excavations at various monuments related with the oasis wall of Bukhara. Since 2015 he is co-directing an archaeological field project investigating agro-pastoral groups in Western Sogdiana during the Hellenistic and post-Hellenistic period, centered on excavations at the desert site of Bashtepa.

Professor Stark's current research interests are, among others, on Hellenistic and Late Antique/Early Medieval Sogdiana and the archaeology and history of nomadic groups close to oasis territories in Western Central Asia. His publications include a monograph on the archaeology of the 6th-8th century Türks in Inner and Central Asia, an exhibition catalogue on Early Iron Age kurgans from Kazakhstan, and numerous articles and book chapters on the history and archaeology of Sogdiana between the Hellenistic and the Islamic periods. He has been co-editor of the Journal of Inner Asian Art and Archaeology (at Brepols) and is currently co-editor of Brill's Handbook of Oriental Studies, Section 8: Uralic & Central Asian Studies (HO8).