Metal detectors at Shelji

SHELJI — The terrace above the river at Shelji is pocked with holes. Some are old and grassed over. Others, archaeologists say, were dug this spring, by people with metal detectors looking for the silver coins for which the medieval town was known.

Shelji, in the eastern part of the Talas District, was a silver-mining town listed by Arab geographers of the 10th century among the towns of the Talas valley. Its galleries and slag heaps have been dated to the 8th to 10th centuries, and silver from its mines was struck into coins for the region. The town declined when the richest veins ran out and was abandoned by the time of the Mongol conquest.

Talas State University has excavated the citadel mound and walled town since 2005, finding smelting furnaces, cupellation hearths, coin blanks, bronze crosses and a fragment of a Syriac inscription. "Every pit destroys the layer that tells us what a coin means," one of the archaeologists said. "A coin sold at the bazaar is just silver. A coin in its layer is history."

The site is protected as a monument of the ISEZ, but it has no guard. District police said they had questioned two men found with detectors near the site in April and would increase patrols. Dealers in Talas say coins from the upper valley regularly appear for sale.