There may be some irony in Claudia Chang's on-the-move lifestyle of late, but in fact it merely reflects the culmination of years of work on various projects.

The SBC anthropology professor has spent more than a decade studying the nomadic peoples of southeast Kazakhstan. Recently returned from an archaeological dig there, she sat down for a few minutes of her brief return to Sweet Briar in December to talk about what's been keeping her so busy.

Chang at the Taldy Bulak 2 archaeological excavation in October 2005. Photo by Perry A. Tourtellotte.First, there was the exciting find at the dig called Taldy Bulak 2, an Iron Age site (ca. 700 BC to 100 AD), where she excavated during a sabbatical this fall. It produced further evidence that the nomadic people of the Kazakh grasslands aren't so, well, nomadic, after all.

"I have found three pit houses, rectangular- or oval-shaped living structures," Chang said. "Everybody used to think that Iron Age people on the steppe were nomads and therefore did not live in real houses. Thus, every time we have evidence for real houses we are happy."

Meanwhile, during her short stay at Sweet Briar, Chang also was preparing to close out one five-year project before embarking on an adventure of another sort. By December's end, she was in Banasthali, India, for a semester-long teaching Fulbright at Banasthali Vidyapith University for Women.

But first she was headed to the Smithsonian's Sackler Gallery in Washington for a private preview of "Of Gold and Grass: Nomads of Kazakhstan" — an exhibition of gold artifacts and a window into the ancient cultures of the Kazakh steppe. As its co-curator, Chang was responsible for the catalog and scholarship for the exhibition, which goes on tour in the United States later this year. It opens in September 2006 at San Diego's Mingei International Museum of World Folk Arts and Crafts.

More information on the exhibit is available at www.fiae.org.

Chang, who travels and works with her husband, Perry A. Tourtellotte, has done research in the Talgar Region of Kazakhstan since 1994, focusing on the late Iron Age through the medieval periods (600 BC to 1350 AD).

Taldy Bulak 2 is an Iron Age site (ca. 700 BC to 100 AD) in the Talgar Region of southeast Kazakhstan. Photo by Perry A. Tourtellotte.This semester, however, her attention is on more contemporary cultural issues. She hopes the Fulbright experience will be a "jumping off point for my own development as a teacher and an anthropologist," she said.

"When I applied for the Fulbright, I wanted to go to India because I wanted to know what it would be like to teach at a women's institution in a developing nation. Do they face the same issues we do? How do women cope with traditional values in a rapidly changing society? As an anthropologist I am endlessly curious about how other people formulate the same issues and problems we face."

Chang believes Banasthali Vidyapith is a good study, because it's seeks to be on the cutting edge of women's education in technology and biology, as well as the social sciences and the humanities.

"They're training this generation of women to be on the forefront of biotechnology" yet it is in a very traditional social setting in rural India, Chang said.

As globalization increasingly impacts South Asian society, Chang also wants to know how Indian — and by extension American — women are going to fit in to the new world order.

"I hope to come back to Sweet Briar and the U.S. with all kinds of insight on how we could internationalize our curriculum to address the globalization of the world."