Introduction

The Bala Hisar at Charsadda

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The Bala Hisar of Charsadda is strategically located; close to the Khyber Pass, adjacent to the junction of the Swat and the Kabul Rivers, and at a critical point where the trade and communication routes through the mountain passes from Central Asia and China meet the major route across the north of the sub-continent.

In mid-late 2006, Nasim Khan of the Department of Archaeology at the University of Peshawar and Cameron Petrie of the Department of Archaeology at the University of Cambridge established a collaborative research agreement between their universities. The Director General of Archaeology and Museums, Government of Pakistan invited this collaboration to apply for a permit to carry out excavations at Bala Hisar of Charsadda, and a licence was granted in October 2006. This research project developed under the aegis of the Ancient and Medieval Gandhara Research Group, which is one of the key research clusters of the Society for South Asian Studies.

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