Ulug Depe: A Forgotten City in Central Asia

Ulug Depe - the ‘great mound’ in Turkmen - is one of the major archaeological sites in Turkmenistan, with important remains spanning a long period, from the 6th to the 1st millennium BC. Favorably located on a fertile watercourse running down from the Kopet Dagh mountain range, the mound attracted the notice of archaeologists as early as the 1960s. It is currently explored by a joint Turkmen-French expedition whose research is presented here.The site rises to an imposing silhouette before the Kopet Dagh mountain range. Today, from a height of nearly 30 meters, one can see a distance of 15 km on all sides. Accounting for an additional 10 meters for the monumental building erected on the summit, the outline of other archaeological mounds, or the movement of men and cattle, could have been perceived at up to a distance of 30km.