Aydogdy Kurbanov is a historian and archaeologist who specializes in the study of the Prehistoric and Late Antique Central Asia. He holds a PhD from the Free University Berlin, Germany (2010). His thesis "The Hephthalites: archaeological and historical analysis" (https://refubium.fu-berlin.de/handle/fub188/8366) is a wide-ranging work that is a substantial building stone for a history of the Late Antique period in Central Asia. Dr. Kurbanov in his work draws on an astounding variability of sources, from the Chinese, Byzantine, Iranian and Indian sources and associated languages, to architecture, burial forms, coins and pottery. With this broad, overarching approach, Dr. Kurbanov was able to highlight particular problems in the Late Antique history of Central Asia.
He worked at the German Archaeological Institute's Eurasia Section in Berlin, as well as at the Free University Berlin. Since his return to Turkmenistan, he had been the Head of the Archaeology department of the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography at the Academy of Sciences of Turkmenistan. He has co-organized major conferences each year and is doing excavations in Turkmenistan. Dr. Kurbanov has meanwhile vastly extended his research interests and directs an excavation project at Dashly-depe in Turkmenistan with financial support from the National Geographic. He has extremely important new data on the prehistoric sequence in this part of Turkmenistan, and this information on the transition from the Neolithic to the Chalcolithic periods concerns one of the enigmatic aspects of the chronology of early Central Asia.