Читать книгу The New Chronology of the Bronze Age Settlement of Tepe Hissar, Iran - Ayşe Gursan-Salzmann - Страница 10

Acknowledgments

It is not possible to name all who have helped me in the course of the research, writing, and rewriting of this monograph; however, several people, friends, and colleagues stand out. First and foremost, my mentor, Robert H. Dyson, opened the door for me to study anthropology and Near Eastern archaeology. He first encouraged and supported my career as an anthropological archaeologist during fieldwork in Turkey and later involved me in the Tepe Hissar project. After the excavation and reassessment study of 1976 was concluded, Dyson proposed that I produce a reliable ceramic chronology for Tepe Hissar by integrating the data he collected in 1976 along with that from Erich F. Schmidt’s excavations of 1931 and 1932. Our discussions led me to boxes of documents in the Penn Museum Archives, which included a rich collection of handwritten field registry books, plans, sections, object cards, and albums of black-and-white photographs depicting stages of the excavations. All these documents were pieces of a puzzle that took much longer to sort out and put together than anticipated. I owe Dr. Dyson my special thanks for his enthusiasm and generous help in explaining the 1976 data. These discussions gave me a clearer understanding of the Tepe Hissar settlement in order to address the interpretation of its cultural chronology and regional importance in southwestern Asia.

Unpublished field notes from the 1976 field season by Susan Howard and Dr. Vincent Pigott along with Howard’s preliminary analysis on the ceramic assemblage provided useful data for the research. To both I extend my appreciation.

In the course of studying Schmidt’s archival materials from Tepe Hissar, I came upon his daily notes and black-and-white images of landscapes and simple life of village inhabitants during his overland travels from İstanbul to Baghdad. Also present were his field notes from excavations at the site of Fara (1931) prior to his work at Tepe Hissar. These documents, interspersed with humorous anecdotes, mirrored a portrait of the person behind the Tepe Hissar project, his detailed thinking process and ambitious personality. These records diverted my attention and inspired me to write a semi-popular book Exploring Iran: The Photography of Erich Schmidt, 1930–1940 (2007). I am indebted to Walda Metcalf, then Assistant Director of Penn Museum Publications, for suggesting the idea of developing this book and to Erika Schmidt, Erich Schmidt’s daughter, who provided me with family photos and biographical anecdotes about her father, which are included in the book.

Dr. Christopher Thornton, both friend and colleague, has generously given many hours of his time to discuss some problems of stratigraphy, to make useful suggestions in editing the manuscript at different stages of research and writing, to provide critical information on the Tepe Hissar metallurgy, and to assist the interns working on different aspects of the database at the Penn Museum while I was doing fieldwork at Gordion, Turkey. I would like to extend my sincere gratitude to him, especially for his unwavering good spirits.

My thanks are due to Dr. Fredrik Hiebert, who shared his field research in Turkmenistan, and extensive bibliography. I thank him also for discussions about the Bronze Age connections of the northern Iranian plateau with Turkmenistan and Central Asia.

In 2007, I had the opportunity to give a progress report on the Tepe Hissar research at an international conference organized by Dr. Hassan Fazeli in Damghan, Iran (“7000 Years of Civilization at Tepe Hissar”). I am grateful for his invitation to the conference, which provided an invaluable opportunity to see Tepe Hissar in its present highly eroded state. At the conference, I gained new insights about recent research in Iranian archaeology, especially carried out by Iranian archaeologists. Fruitful discussions with Barbara Helwing, Hassan Fazeli, Christopher Thornton, Michèle Casanova, Kourosh Roustaei, and Raffaele Biscione deepened my understanding of the papers. Ali Mahfroozi kindly invited several of the Damghan conference participants for a tour of the site and archaeological laboratory of Gohar Tepe, Mazandaran, where he is director of excavation. I am grateful to him for his friendship and sharing his knowledge about the region and the site.

At the Penn Museum, Alex Pezzati, the Senior Archivist, has been generous with his time in helping me find my way through the archives and bringing out specific documents and drawings, in his usual good spirits, through the different stages of my research. His then-assistant, Alison Miner, was good-natured about finding documents, making copies, and even working up some simple statistics on pottery. Ray Bednarczyk, a dedicated volunteer, completed with grim determination the task of deciphering Schmidt’s field register written in “German” style handwriting, to produce a legible handwritten version. Jana Fisher, as one of the past illustrators at the Penn Museum, did the early pencil drawings of nearly a thousand diagnostic sherds from the 1976 excavation. These drawings were later corrected and digitized by Rie Yamakawa, an architect and a graduate student of conservation at Penn School of Design. I am grateful to them both for the many hours they spent in correcting and re-drawing of the illustrations in this book.

Dr. Brian Rose made comments and bibliographic suggestions; Dr. Naomi F. Miller went through the final draft of the manuscript with a critical and intelligent eye. I appreciate their contributions.

At least a dozen volunteers played an important role at different stages of the research, keeping the database up-to-date, doing bibliographic research, reading part of the manuscript, preparing power-point presentations, and helping to write up progress reports. One of the volunteers, Anne Bomalaski, who worked tirelessly on different aspects of research over several years, supervised the short-term volunteer interns. I am especially thankful to her and the other volunteers for help on many aspects of the research.

Among the long-term volunteers, William (Bill) Gardner and James (Jim) Mueller worked on Schmidt’s burial data; Bill deciphered Schmidt’s original handwritten burial sheets and then inventoried and organized the large assemblage of burial groups into spreadsheets. This arduous process also revealed unpublished notes by Schmidt. Jim did statistical work on burials, so that more precise descriptions of the context of grave objects and burial rituals could be reconstructed. I am grateful to them.

My thanks go to Dr. William Fitts, then-researcher at the Penn Museum, and David Massey, then a graduate student at Ohio State University, for the initial drafting of the GIS maps that were later revised by Ayşem Kılınç Ünlü and Joseph Torres, both graduate students at Penn School of Design. Invaluable technical support was given by two professionals and close friends. James Rowland helped with preparing the manuscript according to the publication guidelines and Jason Francisco, a documentary photographer, took additional photographs of objects. Katherine Blanchard, keeper of the Near East collection, kindly brought the objects from storage so they could be photographed.

I also appreciate the timely and thought-provoking comments and suggestions by the two anonymous reviewers.

To my husband Laurence I express my gratitude for his continued patience and support. Now I can finally say to him, “The Tepe Hissar manuscript is finished,” in response to his intermittent queries, “when will it be completed?”

To my daughter Han who patiently helped me with German translations of articles and, as a talented illustrator and architect, drafted the line drawing of the iconic gold “mouflon” imprinted on the hard cover, which is considered a symbol of sustenance, fertility, and sacred power in ancient Southwest Asia.

Last but not least, my gratitude goes to Erich F. Schmidt, an archaeologist who was trained as an anthropologist under Franz Boas in late 1920s. He undertook a most intellectually and politically challenging project in northern Iran, which, at that time, was an archaeological “terra incognita.” Schmidt’s systematic and untiring work at Tepe Hissar, which lasted 10 months over two field seasons, revealed a major Bronze Age settlement on the crossroads of southwestern Asia and also brought up many questions, which were addressed forty-five years later by Dyson and, after three more decades, by this author, in light of new excavation data from Tepe Hissar and other sites in Iran and Central Asia.

Major funding for the Tepe Hissar Publication Project came from The Shelby White and Leon Levy Program for Archaeological Publications. I received additional funding from the University of Pennsylvania Museum Research Fund; the American Institute of Iranian Studies paid for my trip to the Damghan Conference; and Erika Schmidt kindly responded to my request for additional funds for illustrations, in memory of her father’s excavation at Tepe Hissar. To all I extend my heartfelt thanks.