Tales of Three Worlds collects, as a sign of gratitude and affection, a series of papers by many authors who, in different times, contexts and contingencies, had the luck to meet Sandro Salvatori, and share with him a path of knowledge and mutual personal acquaintance. The book is divided in three sections. Whatever was the apparent relevance of what he was documenting and protecting, Sandro always acted with a deep sense of personal responsibility and with the utmost care. The first section deals with his long years of work in Middle Asia, from the plains of Sistan to those of the Indus, the coasts of the Omani peninsula and southern Turkmenistan. Here, as all authors acknowledge, Sandro's papers have marked true benchmarks of archaeological research – milestones that will be used by others for many future decades for new outlines of the social evolution in the involved regions. The second tells about Sandro's activities in Italy, as an officer of the Archaeological Superintendency (Ministry of Cultural Heritage) of his region; for years, he was daily on duty for monitoring and preserving a wide range of cultural contexts, often far from the lights of the academic scenarios. Third comes a section on the prehistory of north-eastern Africa, a context in which Sandro could work in full scientific and familiar ease, as he was prevented from doing in other situations. The groundbreaking nature of his work here is self-evident. The editors and authors of the book know very well that the sign left by this book is certainly too little for what Sandro has actually done in our field and in the life of many friends and colleagues – but the sign is a long-due one, and it is sincere.
