Introduction to Islamic Archaeology Fall 2007: Full Course Description

The Muslim world has increasingly become a major topic of contemporary discussion and academic research. While numerous disciplines from history to political science have made major contributions to the study of Islamic civilization (religions, politics, cultures and peoples), its archaeology has largely been overlooked as a source for understanding the lives of Muslims (and many non-Muslims) and the diverse societies they have created. This course will offer students a survey of the artifacts, sites, methods and conceptual issues that constitute the present state of Islamic period archaeology. We will examine the ability of archaeology to provide us with knowledge about the Islamic tradition and the varied social worlds that it encompasses.

Our approach will be wide ranging in both its temporal and geographical scope given the historical and topographical extension of the Islamic tradition as a social, cultural and religious phenomenon. Our predominant focus will be on the earlier periods, from the rise of Islam in Arabia through to the collapse of the Abbasid dynasty around 1250 with the Mongol conquest of Baghdad. However, we will also consider the growing research in the sub-specialties of Crusader and Ottoman period archaeology. Similarly, given that the majority of archaeological research has been concentrated in the Middle East and North Africa these regions will serve as the primary focus of our discussion. However, “peripheries” such as Andalusia (Spain), Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, Central Asia, and even South-East Asia will also be addressed as part of an effort to probe questions of cultural syncretism and imperial expansion associated with the spread of Islamic culture and religion.

This course will concentrate on the presentation of archaeological materials in order to approach a number of topics of concern for the political, economic, and religious life of predominantly Muslim societies. They include: the spread of Islam, relations between confessional groups (Shi‘a, Sunnis, Christians, Jews, etc.), ritual/religious practice, urbanism, monumentality, continuities with the past, frontiers and jihād, sacred space, settlement patterns, tribal organization, political authority, and trade networks. However our concern with archaeological sites and artifacts will not be in isolation. We will also examine the texts (in translation) of important Muslim geographers, historians and religious scholars whose writings and representations bear on the interpretation of the material record. The goal will be to broaden the scope of Islamic archaeology beyond the confirmation of political narrative histories or merely the aesthetics of art objects. Our perspective will consider the material worlds unearthed by archaeology to serve as a record detailing the intersection of the political, socio-cultural and religious forces that constitute the dynamics of Muslim societies and the Islamic tradition. This will ultimately allow us to rethink the relationship of artifacts and texts in the project of knowing the past and analyzing how that past is used in the present.

As artifacts and the materials and labor that went into making them are so central to the themes of this course we are privileged to work with a small collection of objects that are part of the Brown University collection. Over the semester we will hold a series of lab sessions where students will have hands-on opportunities to examine these materials, collected from numerous sites throughout the Islamic world, and to begin the work of cataloguing and researching the collection. Students will use these pieces to develop and appreciation for their role in the social worlds of production, consumption, deposition, collection and study. We will use them as an entry into what the artifact can tell us not only about the past but also about ourselves and our own relationship with things.

Course Format

This course meets for three sessions each week. The general structure will be for me to give 40 minute slide based lectures (more like informal presentations) with 10 minutes of Q&A. Throughout the course, and generally on Fridays there will be a number of labs (see below). Additionally we will have a number of discussion sections throughout the semester. These will serve as opportunities to discuss more specifically the more conceptual readings (particularly the book length monographs) in order to better tackle the larger themes and arguments that they present. During some of these sessions I may arrange for activities such as debates or presentations by the students.

Therefore, in terms of preparing the readings each week it would be helpful to have read them before the lectures. I will likely refer to them in my presentations but will not assume that they are part of your working knowledge. However, it will be important to have read them in order to be prepared for the discussion sections, written assignments and quizes. Before each discussion I will give you specific guidance about what is most important and which readings to have available in class.