A Modern Archaeology of the Sasanian Period: Former Limitations and New Perspectives
Newsletter di Archeologia CISA, Volume 7, 2016, pp. 35-88 A MODERN ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE SASANIAN PERIOD: FORMER LIMITATIONS AND NEW PERSPECTIVES Bruno Genito, Università degli Studi di Napoli “L’Orientale” Introduction* It is never easy to handle theoretical and methodological issues arising from a particular scientific topic in a kind of review of studies, which is, in its way, what is being presented here. Studies of the archaeology of the Sasanian period have been the subject of numerous acute and critical comments by distinguished scholars in the past, including Huff (1986, 302-308) and more recently as well (1998-2011). Those issues which have been handled, too, have clearly always somewhat suffered from a complex of inferiority to other periods of the history of ancient Iran which are considered by far, the most formative and important: the Achaemenid and the Islamic eras. And this in spite of the fact that the majority of scholars have looked upon the period in question as a real golden age of Persian culture and art, and that it was quite often mentioned in later Islamic sources (including the Shah-nameh by Firdousi), as in many ways an apogee of the fabulous, formidable and legendary Persian Empires. For many scholars the archaeology of the Sasanian period and also that of the early Islamic period, as Whitcomb rightly has pointed out (2010, 5), has always been considered a part of history, and especially of the history of art. This classification, set in stone, has had a long and respectable tradition so far, but at last it has begun to be seen from a different perspective by a growing number of scholars.
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