PAKISTAN HERITAGE 2 (2010) LATEST ARCHAEOLOGICAL EXPLORATIONS IN THE CHITRAL VALLEY (2009) Latest Archaeological Explorations in the Chitral Valley (2009) IHSAN ALI, IBRAHIM SHAH, RUTH YOUNG and ABDUL SAMAD The present report is a summary of recent field investigations conducted jointly by Hazara University (Mansehra), the University of Leicester (UK) and Abdul Wali Khan University (Mardan) as part of a 3-year project titled Archaeological Investigations and their Link to Heritage Management in District Chitral, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, Pakistan being funded by the British Council. Archaeologists, students and technical experts from these three institutions participated in the field work that spread over a period of about two months. The chief aims of this project are to systematically explore the archaeology of the Chitral Valley, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan and to develop ways of presenting and managing this unique heritage. Chitral is one of the most remote areas in all Pakistan, and primarily known to foreign and domestic visitors for natural beauty, mountaineering, hiking and wild life. Preliminary investigations show that Chitral has a wealth of cultural history, which is poorly understood. If this cultural history can be identified, excavated and recorded, it would not only help scholars and residents of the valleys to understand the past in this area, but it could also be used to develop sustainable cultural tourism here. In the first field season (2009), archaeological survey was the primary means of obtaining archaeological data, and in order to remove bias and to begin to obtain a more complete picture of past settlement activity in this region, a systematic approach to survey was taken. This systematic approach consisted of surveying in 24 parallel transects, each one five km long, allowing us to cover an area of 125 2 km in total. This method is in direct contrast to the more usual ‘village to village’ survey approach, which has been employed in this region to date. Alongside this new survey methodology, sites reported by local people were also recorded, as well as preliminary work on the heritage element of the project, which will be reported separately. In this first year of the project, survey was focused in the lower part of District Chitral, to the south of Chitral town, and a total number of 17 archaeological sites were documented; most of them attributed to the so-called ‘Gandhara grave culture’ including one big cemetery of Balasht in the Ayun area. Another interesting grave complex was documented in Muldeh Ayun. Some historic period fortresses such as Chamarkun fortress (Noghorzoom), located at an elevation of about 5500 feet, Noghorgai and Narotek fortresses (all previously known sites) were also explored. Transect Survey The area from Chamarkun to Syedabad village, located on the left bank of the river Chitral, was covered in the grid of twenty four transect lines. The extreme topography of Chitral made the survey very difficult in this first season. In almost all transect lines, our teams had to climb up for two to three hours only to reach their starting point, from where they had to mount further five km without any climbing equipments/training etc. Furthermore, to reach finishing transect points, our teams