98944 Iran Antiqua 52 00 in Memoriam Haerinck.Indd

IranicaAntiqua, vol. LII, 2017 doi: 10.2143/IA.52.0.3269013 IN MEMORIAM ERNIE HAERINCK – BIOGRAPHY AND BIBLIOGRAPHY Ernie Haerinck, the editor of Iranica Antiqua since 1993, passed away on 5 October 2016 at the age of 67, much unexpected to all but a few peo- ple. He had realised the gravity of his illness for some time but kept it hidden from friends, family and colleagues. It gave him the time he needed to put his things in order, to complete some last scientific publications and to reflect on his life. It was very much in line with his character, meticu- lously organised and systematic in everything he did, somewhat reserved and on his own, yet at the same time very accessible to everyone. Colleagues and scholars could always rely on him for support or advice and many of us remain indebted to him. Ernie had a clear vision of what archaeology stood for and never lost track of it, even when more trendy approaches were sometimes in vogue. (°20 June 1949 – †5 October 2016) VIII B. OVERLAET The last few years had been very trying on him. Ernie did not have children and his beloved wife Bernice, his lifelong companion, had passed away only four years before, after a long and painful disease. Work had very much filled the void and since his retirement from his University in September 2014, he divided his time between golf and work, enjoying the long rounds on the course as much as the many hours he spend at his desk at home, working on the final reports of his excavations. Ernie considered it to be his duty to make sure that his excavations would be published. Looking back on his life, he was at peace, said he had only very few regrets and looked forward to be reunited with his wife Bernice. Ernie Haerinck was an exceptional scholar with a rare and broad know- ledge of the Near East. Following in the footsteps of a generation of pio- neers in Iranian archaeology that included his mentor Louis Vanden Berghe, he kept an eye for what he called “the bigger picture”. He never limited himself to a single specialist research but continued to cover the most diverse subjects and periods. Compiling and publishing analytical bibliographies on the archaeology of Iran and the Gulf was just one of the ways he kept track of everything that went on in his field. It also made him a welcome guest at symposia and workshops, a valued editor of Iranica Antiqua and ActaIranica, and got him invited as a member on editorial boards of international journals like ArchäologischeMitteilungenausIran undTuran, Parthica,AncientWest& East, and ArabianArchaeologyand Epigraphy. During his long career, Ernie Haerinck received many honours. He was Commander in the OrderofLeopold and Fellow Member of the Belgian RoyalAcademyofOverseasSciences. He became Corresponding Member of the GermanArchaeologicalInstitute (DAI) in Berlin and an Advisory Committee Member of the ShanghaiArchaeologyForum. Ernie Haerinck was born in Ghent, a medieval town in Flanders and the home town of his University, where he felt at home and lived most of his life. In 1967 he enrolled as freshman at the University of Ghent to study art history and archaeology. He graduated in June 1971 with as specialisa- tion “Archaeology of the Near East” and left two months later for Iran. He had received a small grant funded through the cultural agreements between the Kingdom of Belgium and the Imperial State of Iran. The goal of his stay was to combine the study of Persian at the University of Tehran with a research project on Parthian pottery. He would stay two years in Iran. It would be a decisive period for the rest of his career. He became fluent IN MEMORIAM ERNIE HAERINCK IX Ernie Haerinck at Tepe Nush-i Jan (1972) in Persian and acquired a taste for the Persian way of life. The second year, his wife Bernice joined him in Iran and together they travelled most of the country. It gave him the opportunity to meet many Iranian and foreign colleagues like him, at the beginning of their career, and he forged long last- ing friendships. Ernie visited many excavations and joined those of his mentor Louis Vanden Berghe in Luristan (1971) and the British excavations at Nush-i Jan (1972 and 1973). He often recalled – not without some self-mockery – that it was at Nush-i Jan that he experienced first hand the complexity of excavating Near Eastern mudbrick. Following his stay in Iran, he was drafted for military service (2/1974 – 4/1975) which he spend most of the time in Western Germany. After his X B. OVERLAET return from service he received a 4 year PhD grant from the Belgian National Fund for Scientific Research. However, two years later he already joined the staff of Ghent University taking up the job of Louis Vanden Berghe’s assistant. On 17 March 1978, he presented his PhD on the Par- thian ceramics in Iran. It became a reference work, first published as a book in 1983 and later translated into Persian (1997). Ernie kept the same tasks at his University until Vanden Berghe’s retirement in 1989, when he became – long overdue – associate professor. Ernie would continue his career at his alma mater, promoting to professor (2000) and Ordinarius (full professor) (2006) to retire in 2014 as Emeritus. Throughout his teaching career at the University, Ernie gave courses on the archaeology of the ancient Near East, on Mediterranean archaeology and on Islamic architecture and culture, mostly with a strong focus on Iran, Mesopotamia and the Persian Gulf. His courses, spiced with stories from personal experience, were valued by legions of students. He supervised no less than 10 doctoral dissertations and evaluated 11 others in Europe and the USA. During his professorship, Ghent University was a centre for the archaeology of Iran and the Persian Gulf coast that received scholars from Poland, Spain and Australia for research stays. In 2002, Ghent hosted the Iranian travelling exhibition “7000 years of Persian Art” and in 2003 he organised an international congress “The Iron Age in the Iranian World”. The early part of Ernie’s career at the University was extremely trying as the alcoholism of his mentor resulted in an increasingly problematic behaviour. It was down to Ernie to effectively carry the Near Eastern department and to keep on motivating its students. Before the Islamic Re- volution of 1979 stopped all fieldwork, he was able to participate in three more campaigns of the Belgian excavations in Luristan and he travelled with Louis Vanden Berghe and the University’s photographer Erik Smekens to catalogue and document the Iranian rock reliefs (1975, 1976 and 1977). The transition to an Islamic Republic temporarily halted most of the international field research in Iran and this included the Belgian work. It was only in 1996 that Ernie returned to Iran when we were invited to discuss future cooperation with Ghent University and the Royal Museums of Art and History, Brussels. Eventually, this resulted in a joined prospection in Luristan in 2006 but renewed excavations did not realise. Still, Iran and Luristan in particular remained a strongpoint of his research with the final publications of the Belgian fieldwork (Luristan Excavation Documents). Whereas the first decades of Ernie’s career were focused on Iranian archaeology, he later expanded his horizon to the Arabian world and inves- IN MEMORIAM ERNIE HAERINCK XI tigated its role in the international trade networks of the Hellenistic / Par- tho-Sasanian period. In 1986 Ernie had the opportunity to join two of his long-time friends and colleagues from his time in Iran, Rémy Boucharlat (Lyon) and Dan Potts (Copenhagen), on a joined survey at the coastal site of ed-Dur in the Emirate of Umm al-Qaiwain. An international research project was launched the following year, with several teams taking turns in excavating at the site. During his very first campaign, Ernie discovered a unique and exceptionally well-preserved Shamash temple. He continued for nine years (1987-1995), excavating and documenting more of the temple area and hundreds of tombs. By 1995 he felt the data he had collected were sufficient to illustrate the site’s main period – 2nd half of the 1st century BC to the early 2nd century AD – and time had come to move on and prepare the final reports. He wanted to remain actively engaged in fieldwork, however, and he surveyed in 1996 Сir Bani Yas and Dalma islands (Abu Dhabi, UAE). In 1998 he excavated with Peter Magee at Muweilah (Sharjah, UAE) and the following years investigated two burial mounds at Shakhoura on Bahrain (1999-2000). The next few years he had to refrain from fieldwork due to his wife’s illness and the burden of administrative tasks at his University. The lure of fieldwork remained, however, and in 2008 he co-directed an excavation at Kalba (Sharjah, UAE). From 2009 until his retirement in 2014, I had the privilege to join him in co-directing Belgian excavations at Mleiha (Sharjah, U.A.E.) on behalf of his University and the Royal Museums of Art and History, Brussels. The project wanted to document the early Hellenistic period in the Oman peninsula, the phase preceding his ed-Dur excavations. He was unable to join the 2015 campaign due to the early stages of his illness, but neverthe- less continued to collaborate closely on the project. In April 2016 he was well enough to make a last visit to the UAE, where he gave an interview in ‘his’ temple at ed-Dur, which had finally been restored the year before, for a documentary on the history of the Emirates.

Load more