Major recent archaeological initiatives

Northwest University's attempts to find Greater Yuezhi

Since 2009, Wang Jianxin, an archaeology professor at Northwest University in Xi'an, Shaanxi province, has been working in Central Asia in search of the Greater Yuezhi, a nomadic group that migrated from China to Central Asia during the Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD 220), in an attempt to clarify its history.

He and his team have discovered the remains of a Central Asian kingdom that existed from the 1st century BC to the 5th century AD known in Chinese as Kangju at the Sazagan site in Samarkand, Uzbekistan. They also found a Greater Yuezhi site to its south at the Rabat cemetery in Boysun, Uzbekistan.