1st Edition

Historical Archaeology and Heritage in the Middle East

By Ruth Young Copyright 2019
    256 Pages
    by Routledge

    256 Pages
    by Routledge

    Landlord villages dominated Iranian land tenure for hundreds of years, whereby one powerful landlord owned the village structures, surrounding farmland, and to all intents and purposes, the village occupants themselves, a system that in some cases remained in place up to the 1979 Islamic Revolution. In Oman, mud-brick oases were home to most of the rural population right up until Sultan Qaboos came to power in 1970, and required inhabitants of mud-brick houses to relocate into new concrete block buildings.



    Historical Archaeology and Heritage in the Middle East explores these everyday, rural communities in Iran and Oman in the 19th and 20th centuries, through a combination of building analysis, excavation, artefact analysis and ethnographic interviews. Drawing on the results of original field projects, the book considers new ways of exploring traditional lifeways, giving voice to hitherto largely ignored sections of the population, and offers new and different ways of thinking about how these people lived and what shaped their lives and the impact of major political and social changes on them. Place, memory and belonging are considered through the lens of material culture within these villages.



    The first of its kind, the book brings together methodologies, research questions, and themes that have never been used or addressed in the Middle East. Helping to establish historical archaeology in the Middle East and providing new ways in which the memorable, quotidian past can be exploited for its social and economic value in contemporary community and heritage developments, it is an ideal resource for students, scholars and practitioners of historical archaeology and heritage of and in the Middle East.

    List of Figures



    Acknowledgements



    Notes on the Identification of Interviewees



    1 Introduction



    The aims of this book



    Key concepts in this book: place, memory, belonging



    Heritage



    The case studies



      The Iran project: Landlord Villages of the Tehran Plain



      Landlord villages of Iran



      Post revolution villages



      The Oman project: Bat Oasis Heritage Project



      Oman villages of the interior



      Housing changes in Oman



    Conclusion





    2 Recent histories of Iran and Oman



    An outline of recent Iranian History



    An outline of recent Omani history



    Nation building, heritage, and place



      Iran: nation building by the Pahlavis



      Oman: nation building by Sultan Qaboos



    Conclusion





    3 An archaeology of place and memory



    Archaeology is a way of understanding how people make place



    The village plans



    Place and power



    Giving meaning to place



    Place and religion



    Public places



    Place and memory



    Post abandonment



      Landlord villages



      Bat Oasis



    Conclusion





    4 Memory, place and belonging



    Place, archaeology and memory



    Place and belonging under attack



    Mudbrick and memory in Oman



    Mudbrick and memory in Iran



      Kazemabad and Hosseinabad Sanghar memories



      Gach Agach memories



    Discussion and conclusion





    5 Heritage in the Middle East



    Heritage



    UNESCO World Heritage in relation to the Middle East



    Why is the Bat prehistoric archaeological landscape a WH site and not the Bat Oasis?



    Heritage in the Middle East



    National heritage in Oman



    National heritage in Iran



    Quotidian and fragmented heritage



    Conclusion



    6 Historical archaeology and heritage in the Middle East



    Barriers to historical archaeologySo how should we go about setting up ‘good’ heritage and archaeology projects?



    Community involvement



    Conclusion



    Bibliography



    Index

    Biography

    Ruth Young is a Reader in Archaeology at the University of Leicester, UK. She is interested in the historical archaeology and heritage of the Middle East and South Asia and has directed and co-directed excavations and fieldwork in Iran, Lebanon, Oman, and Pakistan. Her recent publications include Post-Conflict Archaeology and Cultural Heritage (2017, Routledge), and The Archaeology of South Asia (2105).