Material culture of the Persian Gulf and the neighbouring regions. Themes and methods in Islamic arc

In this course, we will watch two actors—archaeology and art history—coming together on a stage to tell a story of particular buildings, sites, landscapes, and peoples of the wider Gulf region. The scene is changeable: it could be replaced by another part of the Islamic world (and probably beyond), but the problems we will be tackling are universal. We will thus look into specific examples of settlements, installations, works of art and architecture, pottery etc. from the region (mainly from modern-day Kuwait, the UAE, Oman, and Iran) and discuss what they tell us about studying Islamic material culture in general. How does access (and lack of access) to natural resources shape customs, traditions, and material culture? Do seas divide or connect mainlands?  What is ‘a city’? Do iconographic motifs live as long as their symbolic meanings, or longer? How does what is preserved archaeologically reflect the ‘historical truth’? We will also discuss the methodological questions related to the usefulness, limitations and coexistence of historical, archaeological, and art-historical methods. How can (and cannot) archaeology and art history work together to answer the ‘bigger questions’? How should researchers of the material culture treat written sources? Is every similarity or co-presence in material culture meaningful? What are the potentials and the limitations of archaeometric/scientific methods?  We will also analyse the ‘Islamic’ layer of the problems in question by discussing how the pre-Islamic traditions of the region(s) influenced the Islamic material culture, and how our modern understanding of Islam and the Arab world influence our research.

General reading:

Petersen, A., Arabia and the Gulf, in: (ed. Fenwick, C., Insoll T., Walker, B.),  The Oxford Handbook of Islamic Archaeology, 2020

Ulrich, B., The Medieval Persian Gulf, 2023