IRANICA: EXCAVATION: FOOTNOTES

1. O. Grabar, “The visual arts, 1050-1350,” in J.A. Boyle, ed., The Cambridge history of Iran: Volume 5, The Saljuq and Mongol periods (Cambridge, 1968), 626. On the “Saljuq explosion” see also the classic article by Richard Ettinghausen, “The flowering of Seljuq art,” Metropolitan Museum Journal 3 (1970), 113-31.

2. For a personal account of this story, see E.O. Negahban, Marlik: the complete excavation report (Philadelphia, 1996), 1:5-10. A far more heated account of the archaeological exploration of Iran in the early 20th century may be found in M.G. Majd, The great American plunder of Persia’s antiquities: 1925-1941 (Lanham, 2003) – useful especially for the archival sources cited therein. Generally on the history of Islamic archaeology, see S. Vernoit, “The rise of Islamic archaeology,” Muqarnas 14 (1997), 1-10.

3. Smith, Persian Art, 20-23. On Smith, see L.M. Helfgott, Ties that bind: a social history of the Iranian carpet (Washington, 1994), 125-43.

4. W.R. Johnston, William and Henry Walters, the reticent collectors (Baltimore, 1999), 195.

5. “New Rubaiyat of Omar discovered in ancient volume,” New York Times, 12 April 1914, SM2.

6. M. Jenkins-Madina, “Collecting the ‘Orient’ at the Met: early tastemakers in America,” Ars Orientalis 30 (2000), 73, fig. 2.

7. H. Kevorkian, Exhibition of the Kevorkian Collection (New York, 1914).

8. R. Fry and C. Vignier, “The new excavations at Rhages,” The Burlington Magazine for connoisseurs 25 (1914), 210-18.

9. See the various articles by Schmidt: “Excavations at Rayy,” University Museum Bulletin 5(4), Jan 1935, 25-27; “The Persian expedition,” University Museum Bulletin 5 (5), March 1935, 41-49; “Rayy research 1935, Part I,” University Museum Bulletin 6 (3), March 1936, 79-87; “Rayy research 1935, Part II,” University Museum Bulletin 6 (4), Mary 1936, 133-36; “Excavations at Rayy,” Ars Islamica 2 (1935), 139-41; as well as A.R. Hall, “The Persian expedition, 1934,” Bulletin of the Museum of Fine Arts 33 (157), June 1935, 55-59.

10. E.F. Schmidt, Flights over ancient cities of Iran ( Chicago, 1940), Pl. 30.

11. Nishapur too had long been subject to pot-hunting; see the remarks of C.K. Wilkinson, Nishapur: pottery of the early Islamic period (New York, 1973), xxiii.

12. A.U. Pope, “The ceramic art in Islamic times,” in idem., ed., A survey of Persian art, from prehistoric times to the present (London, 1938-39), 3:1446, n.1.

13. Information on Rabneou is scarce, but see now S. Littlefield, Doris Duke’s Shangri-La (Honolulu, 2002), 40-46.

14. Especially the classic studies by Arthur Lane: Early Islamic pottery: Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Persia (London, 1947), and Later Islamic pottery: Persia, Syria, Egypt, Turkey (New York, 1957).

15. Generally on this problem, see O. Watson, Ceramics from Islamic Lands (New York, 2004), 12-20. For a different approach to the rift between art history and archaeology, see O. Grabar, “Between connoisseurship and technology,” Muqarnas 5 (1988), 1-8.

16. Pope, “Ceramic art,” 3:1542 and n.6. The problem is of course universal: "Each relay wittingly or unwittingly deforms the signal according to his own historical position." G. Kubler, The shape of time: remarks on the history of things (New Haven, 1962), 22.

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