The AGT Pipeline Project

To highlight the rich cultural heritage of the region, the AGT Project aims to present findings of a collaborative research initiative among archaeologists in Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Turkey and their colleagues from the Smithsonian Institution’s Asian Cultural History Program, Office of Policy and Analysis, and Office of the Chief Information Officer. The recovery, collection management, and interpretation of the archaeological data presented here were financed by BP and its coventurers in the Caspian projects as part of their efforts to protect the cultural resources uncovered during the construction of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) crude oil and adjacent South Caucasus (SCP) natural gas pipelines. The archaeological surveys of the pipeline route began in 2000, before construction commenced. The construction, which began in 2003, was accompanied by teams of Azerbaijani, Georgian, Turkish, British, and American archaeologists who traveled the entire length of the pipelines, a journey that contributed to the story of known archaeological sites in addition to discovering hundreds of previously unknown and unexcavated sites.