The Italian Historical-Archaeological Project of The Catholic University in Sindh The Site of Banbhore.

W ith these words, on 9th May 2023, the Italian Minister for Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, Antonio Tajani, opened the works of the Day of Italian Cultural Missions in the World. I was there, honored to speak at the closing session about the Italian Historical-Archaeological Project at Banbhore (Sindh) and our impact on the Territory. After nearly 20 years in Makran, the Italian Team reached Sindh on the quest for the great Harbour-Town depicted by textual sources of the Past as the key to Sindh and a magnificent terminal of monsoon, river, and land routes of the global trades between Orient and Occident, the Lands of the Zenjis [present Zanzibar] and Inner-Central Asia. In collaboration with two Pakistani scholars, Dr. A. Ibrahim, and K. Lashari, we decided to face the challenging site of Banbhore. After five years of hard fieldwork (2011-2015), we achieved the site's first stratigraphic chronology.

The majestic citadel, rising on a secondary branch of the Indus, powerfully bastioned, its 55 towers still standing in situ watching the river's deltaic region and an imposing A could now be dated since the 4th Century b. CE c. until the early 13th Century CE. The towers' architectonic shape and other structural elements and archaeological data allowed us to perceive the main stages of its life: Seleucid-Parthian-Kushan until the 3rd Century CE: square, massive towers with astounding drainage; U-shaped towers, typical of the Sasanian military architecture suggested a span of time 3rd-8th Century CE; round towers rebuilt on preceding defensive structures - typical of Islamic systems - pointed to the final phase of the site. End of the site's peopling and abandonment? Only hypotheses and new archaeological and historical research work.

At the end of 2017, field-work was resumed on the basis of a Memorandum of Understanding signed between the General Directorate of Antiquities and Archaeology-Ministry of Culture-Tourism-Antiquities and Archives of Sindh, and the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart of Milan, Italy. In 2016, following archaeological and historical data, we had assumed that Banbhore's site might be identified (90%) with the historic harbor town of the pre-Islamic Dib/Islamic Daybul, the heart of a territorial system. Not only this. In 2014-2015, while excavating Trench 9 in the central portion of the mound, on the topsoil levels, we had come across a wealth of ivory offcuts and other artisanal items: unknown...