On December 4-6, 2006, Ghent (Belgium) hosted an International scientific conference organized by the University of Ghent with the support of UNESCO and the Flemish Trust Fund, which discussed the problems of archaeology of the Scythian era of the Altai and the natural context of ancient monuments preserved in permafrost. The participants of the international forum, which brought together more than 50 people from nine countries (England, Belgium, Germany, Holland, Kazakhstan, Russia, USA, France, Switzerland), were welcomed by the leadership of the University of Ghent and UNESCO representative Yu. Khan, who noted the importance of the issues discussed in the context of global climate change. (This is the second international scientific forum held in 2006; a scientific conference with a similar program was held in the spring in Gorno-Altaisk.) The work of the section "Cultural landscape of Altai" was opened by a report by V. Geile (University of Ghent, Belgium), dedicated to the archaeological research of the University of Ghent on the territory of the Russian State.(1995- 1997, 1999 - 2000, 2003 - 2006) and Kazakhstan's (2006) Altai. As the main result, the speaker called the creation of a database that includes information about more than 5 thousand archaeological sites. Employees of the University of Ghent, as the speaker showed, were engaged in mapping various archaeological sites in the Altai Mountains using modern navigation tools and participated in excavations together with the expedition of the Gorno-Altaisk State University. E. Jacobson (University of Oregon, USA) made a presentation on the inventory of archaeological sites in the territory of the Mongolian Altai and approaches to the interpretation of local "cultural landscapes" of this region. In her opinion, the amount of data obtained as a result of joint work with colleagues from the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences (information on several thousand monuments of different eras, includi ... Читать далее