AKPIA Lecture Series, "The Visual and Material Culture of Rayy", Professor Renata Holod

88 Jackson Street, Cambridge MA

Description

Register here: https://bit.ly/renataholod The Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at Harvard University is pleased to host an AKPIA lecture with Renata Holod, College of Women Class of 1963 Professor in the Humanities, and Curator of Near East, Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania. Professor Holod will present “The Visual and Material Culture of Rayy, as Revealed Through the Excavations Headed by Erich Schmidt in the Late 1930s.” In its heyday of the 9-11th cc. CE, Rayy was considered only second to Baghdad with its geographic location on a well-watered plain, and as a stop on major trade routes from east to west and from the Persian Gulf north to the steppes. Today, the site itself has almost disappeared under the mega-city of Tehran. Since 2015, the Rayy Study and Excavation Publication Project has focused on the materials research and digitization of the excavated collections, and the related archives currently housed at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. The Penn Museum was the main support for Erich Schmidt’s 1934-1937 aerial survey explorations and excavations on the Rayy/Azdan Plain; the museum’s Rayy collection represents the largest holdings of objects from the site outside of Iran, as well as Schmidt’s excavation records and aerial photographs. Professor Holod’s lecture will present significant and scientifically retrieved examples of the material and visual culture of Iran, datable from the beginning of the first millennium CE through to early Islamic (Umayyad and Abbasid, 7th -10th c) and Middle Islamic (Buyid and Seljuq, 10th - beg. 13th c) periods. https://fb.me/e/4ePFqfCiX