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The New Chronology of the Bronze Age Settlement of Tepe Hissar, Iran. Ayşe Gursan-Salzmann
Читать онлайн.Название The New Chronology of the Bronze Age Settlement of Tepe Hissar, Iran
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isbn 9781934536841
Автор произведения Ayşe Gursan-Salzmann
Жанр Документальная литература
Издательство Ingram
In addition to the two cycles of excavation, a cursory salvage excavation was carried out in 1995 by Ehsan Yaghmai on behalf of the Iranian Center for Archaeological Research (ICAR), but this material remains almost entirely unpublished. More recently, in 2006, Kourosh Roustaei and his Iranian team have surveyed the boundaries of the Tepe Hissar settlement7 and investigated the geomorphology of the site and possible continuity of the settlement into the Iron Age.
B.1 The Penn Museum’s Involvement: Erich F. Schmidt Excavations (1931–32)
The earliest mention of the site is found in the notebook of General A. Houtum Schindler (Schindler and Schmeltz 1887), an Austrian who served in the Persian army and wrote about the inhabitants of the region looting the site in search of antiquities. The site was later brought to the attention of the archaeological community by Ernst Herzfeld of the German Archaeological Service in Iran. In 1925, he surveyed the Damghan region, cataloged the looted objects mentioned by Schindler (Herzfeld 1988:44), and recommended the site for exploration to Horace F. Jayne, then the director of the Penn Museum. In 1930, Jayne invited Schmidt, who trained at Columbia University under the renowned anthropologist Franz Boas, to undertake the Damghan Project on behalf of the Penn Museum and the Pennsylvania Museum of Art. Schmidt had come highly recommended to Jayne after his previous field research in Arizona and at the Bronze Age site of Alishar Höyük in central Turkey.
Fig. 0.2 Damghan Plain, ringed by snow-capped Elburz mountains, looking northeast, October 1976.
Fig. 0.3 Aerial view (via Google Earth) of Tepe Hissar with site features marked. The site is surrounded by agricultural fields and the contemporary village.
Fig. 0.4 The Tehran-Meshed Railroad, which cuts through Tepe Hissar.
Fig. 0.5 A view of the modern eroded landscape of Tepe Hissar, as seen from south in 2007.
In Jayne’s mind, the Damghan Project could provide another link in the chain of cultural connections between Mesopotamia and Iran. Further, he hoped that it would produce a wealth of objects for display. Fiske Kimball, then director of the Pennsylvania Museum of Art, was interested in the Sassanian palace near Tepe Hissar because of its many exquisite architectural stuccos (Schmidt 1933:455–56, 1937:327–350). As always, funding the project was a crucial matter, especially during the Great Depression. Despite funding difficulties, $16,000 was raised by both museums from member contributions and, later, additional funds were acquired from private sources over a period of three years. To launch the project required a complex network of communications among museum directors, diplomats, scholars, as well as bureaucrats in Reza Shah’s government. Among the key consultant-scholars—apart from Herzfeld, who had strong influence on Jayne’s decisions—were Frederick Wulsin and Arthur Upham Pope. The latter, a strong advocate of the Tepe Hissar Project, was an art historian, whose connections in Iran would later help establish the American Institute for Persian Art and Archaeology, headquartered in New York City. Wulsin had been sent to Iran by Jayne to carry out his own excavations under the auspices of the Penn Museum.8 Thus, Wulsin played a key role in getting the Tepe Hissar Project started as he was already familiar with the rules and regulations for foreign archaeologists working in Iran. In June of 1931, the Iranian Antiquities Law9 was passed. In the same year, Schmidt and his team arrived in Damghan after two months of testing and restudy of the Sumerian site of Fara in southern Mesopotamia. He started excavations at Tepe Hissar on July 19, 1931 (Fig. 0.6).
Fig. 0.6 A photograph from Schmidt’s first day of excavation at Tepe Hissar on July 19, 1931 (Courtesy of the Penn Museum).
The Damghan Project had a full program of excavation at three sites: Tepe Hissar (prehistoric), Damghan town citadel (Late Islamic [Fig. 0.7]), and the nearby Sassanian palace (3rd–7th centuries AD). However, the project’s primary focus was the site of Tepe Hissar.
Fig. 0.7 The late Islamic town citadel at Damghan, excavated as part of Schmidt’s Damghan Project.
B.2 Robert H. Dyson Jr. Excavations (1976)
The second cycle of excavation in 1976 was aimed in part at correcting the stratigraphic and chronological problems from Schmidt’s excavations. In addition, the occupational history of the Main Mound (Buildings 1, 2, and 3), the North Flat (Burned Building complex), the South Hill (industrial workshop), and the Twins were clarified with stratified levels and radiocarbon dates. Additional investigations included geomorphology and ecology (Meder 1989:7–12), archaeometallurgy investigations (Pigott 1989:25–33), and an archaeological survey of the Damghan Plain (Trinkhaus 1989:135–139).
B.3 Archival Research: Re-excavating the Archives of Schmidt and Dyson10
At Dyson’s suggestion, I started to examine the Tepe Hissar ceramic assemblages in 1994, as a post-doctoral research topic. In 2004, the research topic evolved into a more comprehensive project to reassess Schmidt’s excavations in light of the 1976 campaign, specifically, aimed at generating a comparative ceramic chronology. This required an in-depth analysis of the Schmidt and Dyson et al. excavations, using original archives, three published monographs,11 and other largely unpublished reports. Previously, I had done similar research in a study of the Bronze Age burial groups and ceramics from Wulsin’s excavations at Tureng Tepe, which has chronological parallels with the Tepe Hissar ceramic assemblages (Daher 1968), and a re-assessment of the Bronze Age site of Alaca Höyük in central Turkey (Gürsan-Salzmann 1992), excavated by Hamit Z. Koşay in the 1930s. Hence, my longterm experience in archival research and studies of Bronze Age ceramic assemblages provided a solid background for the Tepe Hissar project.
In the course of analyzing the Tepe Hissar material, I had access to Schmidt’s excavated objects and sherds (50% of the total excavated artifacts) and the 1976 project study sherds, all housed at the Penn Museum. Schmidt’s archival papers and the 1976 project field notes were used to generate detailed relational databases for the Main Mound and the North Flat from both cycles of excavation. These relational databases provided efficient cross-referencing of the records.
B.3.1 Schmidt Archives
The entire corpus of Schmidt’s archives consists of 42 boxes of records grouped into sub-series: field notes, reports from the field, a potsherd catalogue, several boxes of object cards and drawings that were grouped into sub-series, burial sheets, and correspondence between Schmidt, Jayne, and other individuals and institutions involved in the project. The Schmidt archives occupy roughly 25 linear feet of box space and several drawers for large-scale drawings of plans and sections. The photographic collection consists of photos of the excavation and expedition trips. They are referenced in the photographic negative card catalogue, which takes up 10 linear feet. In addition, there are 12 large-sized photo albums containing black-and-white prints of excavation shots, burials, objects, and landscape images taken during Schmidt’s reconnaissance trips. All of these records were indispensable to the research undertaken in this restudy. A list of the contents of the Schmidt archives is as follows: general correspondence, reports and publications, field notes, drawings and plans, burial sheets, indexes and catalogs, and financial records. For the most part, the original order has been maintained.
The general