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| Iran Takes Center Stage in Archeological Studies Over the Next Decade or Two, Prominent American Anthropologist | ||||||||||
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Professor Frank Hole was one of the participants in the First International Conference on Ancient Cultural Relations between Iran and West Asia. He presented a lecture titled "Interactions Between Western Iran and Mesopotamia from the 9th-4th Millennia B.C." We conducted an interview with the professor on his lecture and some other issues. He believes Iran will steal the show in archeological studies in the future, outshining many regional players. | |||||||||
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Professor Frank Hole was one of the participants in the First International Conference on Ancient Cultural Relations between Iran and West Asia. He presented a lecture titled "Interactions Between Western Iran and Mesopotamia from the 9th-4th Millennia B.C."
We conducted an interview with the professor on his lecture and some other issues. He believes Iran will steal the show in archeological studies in the future, outshining many regional players. The interview follows: Would you please introduce yourself? I’m Professor Frank Hole, Professor of anthropology, Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, U.S.A. What’s your area of specialization? My area of specialization is the prehistory of the Middle East. I have done work in Iran before the Revolution, and since then I have worked primarily in Syria; so I’m specialist in the late Paleolithic and the Neolithic and Chalcolithic cultures of the Middle East. what’s the topic of your representation here? I spoke about the central, western Zagros mountain area. This is a mountainous region that encompasses southern Kurdistan, Lorestan and the Bakhtiari region, and it’s an area that is not very well known archeologically. But in the 1960s, I did some excavations of caves in the Khorram Abad region; and while I did that, I also did survey in that same valley, where I discovered a number of archeological sites and I collected pottery and material from those sites; but they had not been published and I decided that in this conference I would tell about some of the results from that, but also to include a bigger area of the central Zagros and try to compare the archeology there with Mesopotamia, because the topic of the conference was the relations between Iran and West Asia. And my conclusion was that Iran is very distinct from the rest of West Asia, and particularly the mountain region seems to have connections mostly in and along a north-south direction and with the Iranian plateau , more so even then with the lowland area of Mesopotamia. And what did you find in your studies? Well, in the mountain region, most of the smaller valleys have been dominated by people who are migratory, like the ones that are in recent times; you think of the Lori people, Kurdi people, the Bakhtiari people who travel and live in tents, moving from the low places in the winter to the higher places in the summer; and that seems to have been a dominant pattern all the way through prehistory and history. Of course there were towns in some of these valleys, but most of the people probably were moving with their flocks of goats and sheep. How do you see the change in patterns of life over the last few years in the life of these ethnic people, Kurdish, Lori and Bakhtiari? That’s one of the things I’m very interested in, but I haven’t had a chance to see them yet. I imagine that things have changed very much because there are now good roads, there’s electricity, there’s schooling and the young people have been into military service, so that they now have a much different way of life than they had before. They have opportunities to do different kinds of work, to leave their tribal areas, to get education and so I think there will be many changes. Basically do you think that these tribes can withstand the developments fortified by modern life? Well, tribal life was endangered at the time of the Reza Shah, when he tried to settle the people, and he burned their tents and made them sit in villages. But that didn’t destroy the life, because they began once again, daring to move and be migratory. But I think the educational opportunities that were brought in during the Pahlavi era, the opening up of roads that gave people access to markets, and military service which took the young men away from the tribes, taught them Farsi, showed them different parts of Iran, made it more difficult for them to come back and live as they had before. So I think that some of the languages may be preserved for some time, the Lori, the Bakhtiari, the Kurdi, Laki languages may be preserved, but the tribal life is not going to be preserved. The tribal Sheikhs are no longer important, so the tribes themselves are not going to be effective, I think, in the long run. Some believe in the era of increased globalization, there is a strong tendency toward the homogeneity of the whole population within a single country or even across its boundaries. And some developments over the recent years have shown that there may be a backlash against this. The rise of nationalism in some countries shows this; and some say that such trends, I mean, the rise of ethnic feelings can, in fact, tamper the globalization in homogeneity of people. How do you think this trend is going to unroll? Well, I think you’re right about the backlash to globalization. I’m not sure that it will have very much impact. I think the backlash against globalization has made Iran feel much more distinct as a culture; but I’m not sure that the tribes within Iran are going to be able to use that as well for recapturing their own heritage. I think as soon as the languages disappear and the leadership roles and so on have changed, it’s very difficult to keep that. But I think the globalization in a small scale takes place in a country for instance Iran. That’s not to say that the people in different regions will not feel themselves different and distinct, but I think it’s more likely to be Iran as a country as opposed to the Middle East. Obviously Iran has much richer history in many ways than the neighboring countries. It has a very large population, it’s a very wealthy country potentially, it has an awful lot of resources, and has its own language. So I think Iran stands out as a very strong center and a core civilization that is unlikely to be overwhelmed by globalization. Even though it may benefit in some respects from aspects of globalization, but I don’t think that it’s likely to give up the important parts of Persian culture. What measures do you think we can take in order to preserve the rich diversity of the Iranian anthropological texture? Well, I think that one thing is to recognize that it exists. Under the Pahlavi dynasty, they did not recognize that it existed. You mean constitutionally? Well, I think they made a deliberate effort to suppress the tribes to prevent the use of tribal languages and there was never anything taught about the tribes in the schools. So that a Bakhtiari, for example, child going to school was never taught anything about being a Bakhtiari. It was always the national history that was taught. Now, I think, as I understand it, I don’t know personally, but I understand that there has been more interest now in learning and teaching about the native cultures and their history. And I think since the tribal people did not have any writing, they didn’t write their own history and archeology is about the only way that they will ever have a history. So the work that I’ve been doing in central Zagros, for example, gives many thousand years of history to people who live there, history that they didn’t have before. What rights should these tribes be entitled to? What rights? For example the right to be taught their own language. Well, I think there’s a question there, it’s whether or not that’s important enough to do; there’s a practical matter; the students have to become fluent in Farsi, because they’re not always going to live in the tribal area, they’re going to be able to participate in the broader aspects of society, so it’s very difficult to preserve languages; anywhere in the world, it turns out very difficult. The children may grow up speaking the language, but when they leave home, they think often that it’s not important to preserve it; they don’t teach it to their own children and it’s gone. And within a few generations, there’s nobody who can speak the language any longer. That happens all over the world. So I think there are a lot of oral traditions, there are a lot of legends, there’s a lot of mythology, there are songs. These are the kind of things that ought to be recorded and preserved, and if they once are gone, nobody will ever be able to know them again. So that part of it, I think, gives people a sense of tradition and heritage, and that may be the only thing they’ll be able to take away; they’ll say well “I’m a Lor, I’m a bakhtiari, I’m a Kurd” and they’ll have traditional songs and maybe on special occasions they’ll get out traditional dress. But most of the time, you would never know that they were part of that. But you know in my country, we have people from everywhere in the world, and they mostly speak English and they often don’t teach their children the language and the children don’t take it up seriously and they lose it. But for special occasions, like Nowrouz for example, they will come and they’ll have a Nowrouz celebration. That’s not American, that’s particularly a Persian thing, and so they can bring out some Persian clothes, they can eat Persian foods and things; so they preserve some aspects of it, but it’s not the same. Can you comment on the new works done in the Iranian Archeology? Well, Iranian archeologists have been very active and there are a lot of students. There may be hundreds of students now who’re studying in archeology and they’re very eager, they’re very bright and I understand they’re doing some exceptionally interesting and good work; it’s very exciting to find out about this, it’s a whole new generation that I wasn’t aware of. And I’m an old man now, but now I can see that archeology is going to be in good hands in the future. So it’s been very exciting to me to see not only old colleagues but also new people coming into the field. Do you think that the interest toward the Middle East archeology has lessened in the United States? I think in American schools, at least in the ones I’m familiar with, there have been fewer students who are interested in studying Middle Eastern archeology, in large part because the opportunities to do field work are much reduced. It hasn’t been possible to do research in Iran for 25 years. It hasn’t been possible to do anything in Iraq for at least 10 years and some areas longer. Egypt sometimes is problematic, because there’s been terrorism there for a long time. So the work has been pretty much restricted to Syria and Turkey, and so fewer students have been interested, because the world has shrunk, and I think that’s the main thing. However, if we think about what the most important, exciting archeological area is going to be in the next decade or two, it’s probably Iran and parts of Central Asia. I think a lot of the focus is going to shift away from the Arab countries. Thank you. |
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