Nikolai Ivanovich Veselovsky was a Russian archaeologist and orientalist, specializing on the history and archaeology of Central Asia

Central Asia

Central Asia is a core region of the Asian continent from the Caspian Sea in the west, China in the east, Afghanistan in the south, and Russia in the north...

. Born in Moscow

Moscow

Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...

, schooled in Vologda

Vologda

Vologda is a city and the administrative, cultural, and scientific center of Vologda Oblast, Russia, located on the Vologda River. The city is a major transport knot of the Northwest of Russia. Vologda is among the Russian cities possessing an especially valuable historical heritage...

, studied at Saint Petersburg State University

Saint Petersburg State University

Saint Petersburg State University is a Russian federal state-owned higher education institution based in Saint Petersburg and one of the oldest and largest universities in Russia....

. Reader in 1877, extraordinarius in 1884, ordinarius from 1890. He was the first to excavate Afrasiab

Afrasiab

Afrasiab is the name of the mythical king and hero of Turan.-The Mythical King and Hero:According to the Shahnameh , by the Persian epic poet Ferdowsi, Afrasiab was the king and hero of Turan and an archenemy of Iran...

, the oldest part of Samarkand

Samarkand

Although a Persian-speaking region, it was not united politically with Iran most of the times between the disintegration of the Seleucid Empire and the Arab conquest . In the 6th century it was within the domain of the Turkic kingdom of the Göktürks.At the start of the 8th century Samarkand came...

, as well as several notable kurgan

Kurgan

Kurgan is the Turkic term for a tumulus; mound of earth and stones raised over a grave or graves, originating with its use in Soviet archaeology, now widely used for tumuli in the context of Eastern European and Central Asian archaeology....

s in Southern Russia and Ukraine, notably the Solokha

Solokha

The Solokha kurgan is on the left bank of the Dnepr, 18 km from Velikaya Znamenka . It has a height of 19 m and a diameter of about 100 m, dating to the early 4th century BC...

 and Maikop kurgan

Maikop kurgan

The Maikop kurgan , excavated by Nikolay Veselovsky in 1897 near Maikop, Adygeja, Kuban, Southern Russia, is the eponym of the Early Bronze Age Maikop culture of the Northern Caucasus. Dating to the 3rd millennium BC, the kurgan had a height of about 10 m and a circumference of about 200 m...

s.