Reviews and Editing [Abbas Milani's The Shah]

I have been reading Palgrave Macmillan's advance copy of Abbas Milani's The Shah. I have to say I am dismayed by the lack of editing on this book, and hope to read it in its final form...and that the final form is in fact edited. As someone who writes, with neurotic prescision, I can't understand how this book (even in draft form) was allowed to see the light of day.

I don't know if it is a lack of expertise at the editor's desk: Are the people not competent to take a piece clearly written by a non-native speaker of English and correct the basic and consistent grammatical errors? Was it too much effort, and in general they don't attempt this before jetting the draft off as an advance?

There are parts in the book which repeat paragraphs: copy/paste errors that would have been caught if someone, anyone had actually read the piece before printing it off.

This leads me to ponder, if people in the editing desks aren't reading the Middle East section (or non-fiction and academic papers) adequately, you get what happened with Greg Mortenson and his Three Cups of Tea (Viking/Penguin).

As far as the content of the book is concerned, I am disappointed by the lack of consistency in citations and lack of consistency in transliterations. The thread of the narrative is weak and as a result the author's rhetorical judgements (which then seem politically biased) don't carry through. I was only able to get through 3/4 of the book before giving up in despair. I will attempt to read the published version and hopefully give a more favorable review.

Erebuni publication

Our project at the ancient Urartian site of Erebuni was written up in the following article. It can be accessed on the Peeters website for download. http://poj.peeters-leuven.be/

Title: Erebuni 2007
Author(s): STRONACH, David , TER-MARTIROSOV, Felix , AYVAZIAN, Alina , COLLINS, William , DEMOS, Catherine , GHANIMATI, Soroor
Journal: Iranica Antiqua Volume: 44 Date: 2009 Pages: 181-206
DOI: 10.2143/IA.44.0.2034379

Abstract : New excavations on the Southeast Hill at Erebuni, at the east end of the fertile Ararat valley in Armenia, were designed to re-explore the still understudied Urartian settlement that occupies this prominent extramural location. Contrary to an earlier supposition that the site was broadly contemporary with the eighth to seventh century Urartian occupation in the adjacent Citadel, it emerges that this short-lived settlement may throw valuable light on a notably late phase of Urartian material culture.

Nineveh drawings

I have finished working on the technical illustrations for the upcoming publication of the UC Berkeley excavations at the ancient Assyrian site of Nineveh (on the outskirts of Mosul, Iraq). My PHD advisor, David Stronach, excavated the Halzi Gate in 1989 and 1990. The results were quite spectacular, a destruction layer complete with a crowd of skeletons seemingly killed during the sack of the city. Needless to say, one of the best preserved finds are the arrowheads. I have drawn about a dozen now. He is in the process of producing the final publication with several of his graduate students (now professionals or professors): including Diana Pickworth-Wong, Eleanor Barbanes, Tony Wilkinson and others as a part of the NEH "lost empires" project http://www.neh.gov/news/humanities/2004-11/lostempires.html

Other illustration projects are forthcoming. It may be necessary to re-draw a part of the excavated sections (profile slices through the soil, which show the stratigraphy of the deposit) for the Nineveh project.

Third millennium BCE sites

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mini-update

I am chairing the Iranian Archaeology session at the annual meeting of the American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR) in San Diego in November. I have organized the sessions, invited several Iranian scholars to attend the meetings, and have secured full funding for them from the American Institute for Iranian Studies (AIIrS). It has been quite a task trying to facilitate the visa process, but word is that they should at least be able to get appointment times at the US Embassy at Dubai for next week. Inshallah!

Was just speaking with a colleague today about trying to implement 3-D laser scanning at our site, Erebuni. I took one look at the technology and said, sign me up! But then saw the equipment set-up, and said.."how in the world are we going to get that to Armenia??" Its carrying box is 1x1 meter square, it needs its own computer to tell it what to do, needs an enormously heavy battery pack (imagine a car battery, but heavier), a tripod, a swivel mount. I am thinking about the problems we had with trying to get a medical kit and stadia rod thru customs...and my head is reeling.

Our co-director is going to set up a website for the Erebuni project, hopefully this week...

What's new, and not-so-new

Wrapping up the dissertation for May. Inshallah!!

Getting prepared for a field-season in Armenia. Will be the Archaeological Field Director, managing all of the American field operations at the ancient site of Erebuni.

Just applied for a job teaching at a local college...more on that soon.

In November, I will chair the "Iranian Archaeology" section at the ASOR conference.
http://www.asor.org/AM/2007call.htm
if you want to participate:
http://www.asor.org/AM/participate07.htm

My old publication on Sasanian seals can still be seen at:
http://ecai.org/sasanianweb/

Links to AIA-GM event

Here are links to websites relating to the AIA Gold Medal awarded to Professor David Stronach, that several of you have requested from me:

Link to Archaeology magazine interview of D.S.:
http://www.archaeology.org/online/interviews/stronach.html
Link to Archaeology interview of Alina and myself:
http://www.archaeology.org/0403/etc/president.html
Link to Chris Kostman's website, including pictures of the event: http://www.adventurecorps.com/chronicles/2004aia/index.htm
Link to the Iranian Cultural Heritage News website, which summarizes the interviews:
http://www.chnpress.com/news/?id=2202&section=2

Spenta Productions

I was surfing around today, looking for the websites that discuss my Professor, David Stronach, for the occasion of his being awarded the AIA Gold Medal. I was one of the speakers at the medal ceremony and therefore, had been interviewed by Archaeology magazine. The interview exists in several places still, I remeber that it happens to still be on the CHN website, for example. As I was looking for the interview to give to my father (because fathers tend to like that kind of thing)...(and I am always willing to oblige) I found this very important website of one of our colleagues, Cyrus Kar, who David had mentioned to me several times as a filmmaker.

I would encourage all of you to please watch the short film on his website, spentaproductions.com There is a link provided on the sidebar. The film is important for several reasons: it broaches the point that the life and times of Cyrus the Great are both poorly-understood in western consiousness. As an early Persian(-Elamite) King, and founder of the Achaemenid Empire, Cyrus was able to conquer and appropriate vast territories of the ancient Middle East. Historical documents record that Cyrus was benevolent and was a humanitarian. The point is that his story is so relevant for our times (vis-a-vis, the US occupation of Iraq).

On the other hand, the story of the filmmaker, Cyrus Kar, and his arrest and detainment in Iraq (during the filming of part of his documentary) should bear witness to the policies of the current administration, and their lack of benevolence and humanitarian behavior.

A picture is worth 1000 words.

Pictures in a new place

You may note the small change that I have deleted the pictures off of this blog. Pictures can now be accessed on our picture website. A link is provided under the appropriate heading "links." Rather than clog up this blog with strings of pictures, they are well organized into albums, now.

Most recently, we discovered that we are able to upload videos. Soon they will be in a separate album, but for now there is only one in the "grandparents" album, for obvious reasons.

First post--so much to say, so little time.

Dear Friends,

First a little background...I am a PHD student at the University of California. I am writing my dissertation in Near Eastern Archaeology, with a focus on Iranian civilization and culture.

For those of you who may not know, "the Near East" means "the Middle East" before the modern era. Therefore, if you "do" Near Eastern Studies, your interests are in antiquity (from paleolithic hunter/gatherer societies to the fall of the Achaemenid Persian dynasty when Alexander of Macedon invaded c. 330 BC) or in late antiquity, roughly coterminus with the Roman and Byzantine Empires (the Hellenistic, Parthian and Sassanian dynasties). Late Antiquity ends with the coming of Islam in the 6th century of the common era (CE=AD), and then...Near Eastern Scholars kind of lose interest. But, thankfully, not all of us do. If you concentrate on Islamic art, archaeology, history or culture, you kind of walk a thin line between disciplines: with one foot in Near Eastern Studies and the other in Middle Eastern Studies.

Why is it so? Perhaps because of the history of the western academy and its bias toward preserving European (Christian) traditions.

In any case, I have a great respect for the history of and manifold cultures under the "Islamic" rubric.
As I said, my main focus is Iranian civilization and culture, and as such, I tend more toward using anthropologic frames to my research. My undergraduate honors thesis and master's thesis were studies of the uses, regional significance and chronology of Sasanian sealstones, sealings and bullae. I have also extensively studied Achaemenian history and Islamic culture and history in Iran.

My PHD dissertation is a study of the rise and organization of transcontinental trade in the third millennium BCE (3000-2000 BCE) and its cultural implications.

The difficulties in being a scholar of Iranian Studies in the US are HUGE!!

My colleagues and I have tried for the last three years to conduct a project in Iran. Our problems began with the release of US funds for the project: anyone remember the US trade embargo with Iran? It seems that if you want to conduct any scientific or humanistic research with Iran, it has to be approved by a government office (OFAC) and you get a license telling you what equipment you can bring, and how your money is to be spent. Can anyone imagine trying to run an archaeological expedition without computers? The "OFAC delay" translated into our losing a window of opportunity before the elections in Iran.

Why don't they tell you these things when you are an undergraduate?? So that you can run, run away fast, and get that job making huge sums of money in any other field??

Our second series of problems (all related) began with the new elections in Iran, when Ahmedinejad was elected. Seemingly, none of the Iranian government offices wanted to make any move to get an American/British project pushed through the bureaucracy until things settled down. And now that they have, our file has been shuffled between bureaus, lost, resubmitted, on and on and on.

All of my Iranian colleagues tell me that the Iranians are hopeful, and pleasantly grateful, for our sincere goodwill and desire to collaborate on projects of mutual interest. Let's hope that translates into actions soon.

Until then, I hope to at least get a visa to visit Iran. There are several conferences taking place in Iran in 2007.

My colleagues and I joke that it might be easier to study North Korea. Our other joke is that there won't be any money to study Iranian culture until the US invades...has anyone noted the irony in the NEH grants for "Recovering Afghanistan" or recent US grant initiatives for digital archives of Iraqi archaeological material? I am sure I am not the only one (noting the irony that is). What a mess.