Three stages can be distinguished in the archaeological exploration of Nisa:
1) the pioneering Alexandr Marushchenko (1930-1936), representing the first generation trained at Moscow University and sent to bring Soviet science to the Central Asian republics, where new archaeologists were to replace the pre-revolutionary "archaeological amateurs". His method of excavating by trenching inside buildings, without recording the stratigraphy and therefore irreparably destructive, was harshly criticized by his successor Masson, who succeeded in ousting him completely from the site. He also published very little. To his credit, he immediately understood that he was dealing with the capital of the Arsacid Parthians, and when he retired, he published all his archives - an example that was not always followed.
2) Mikhail Masson and his wife Galina Pugachenkova (1947-1967). Masson, based at Tashkent University, was the only leader of a major Soviet expedition (the JuTAKÈ, South Turkmenistan archaeological expedition) to have been trained in Tsarist times (in Samarkand). Pugachenkova was a professional architect, and the Nisa excavation was conducted as an architectural dig. Unlike his predecessor, who had a few political problems, Masson was a man of power, and he used his networks to publish works of luxurious quality. In just a few years, the "Maison carrée" and most of the monuments of the "Ensemble central" were cleared. The discovery of rhytons and ostraca has already been mentioned. However, in the early 1950s, the mission left Nisa with only a small team, and the bulk of the forces moved to Merv. It's a phenomenon not uncommon in urban archaeology: once the euphoria of the first discoveries has passed, it's as if we're entering a period of diminishing returns, and we look elsewhere [1]. In the case of JuTAKÈ, it's not clear in retrospect that this choice was a happy one.
