Archaeology and Art History: Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Study of Medieval Ceramics from Iran

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Islamic material culture", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

This paper examines the intersections and interdisciplinary uses of large-scale archaeological data sets, from a huge number of sites in numerous countries, to inform the art historical study of the trade in medieval Islamic ceramics from Iran in the 12th and 13th centuries CE. By focusing on a single class of wares (mina’i or haft rang) that are found in very small amounts but at large numbers of sites, from Russia to Kazakhstan, Syria to Afghanistan, and Turkey to Egypt, the scant written sources and, often problematic, museum pieces with no provenance can be augmented with scientific evidence gathered by scholars from a wide range of different regions and backgrounds.

The methodological framework and the problems, as well as opportunities, offered by this approach will be laid out in detail, and the results of a multi-year project using this approach to map the distribution of mina’i wares will be presented.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Islamic material culture   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2023

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow