Nishapur: Glass of the Early Islamic Period by Jens Kröger

The urban of Nishapur, situated in jap Iran, used to be a spot of political significance in medieval instances and a flourishing heart of artwork, crafts, and alternate. Excavated by means of the Iranian excursion of the Metropolitan Museum in 1935-40 and back in 1947, the positioning yielded a wealth of artifacts. This quantity is the fourth in a chain issued by way of the Museum to put up the excavated unearths. The items at the moment are divided among The Metropolitan Museum of artwork in manhattan and the Iran Bastan Museum in Tehran. The Nishapur reveals date from exactly the time whilst Islamic glass-making in Iran used to be at its best. Glass items of exceptional caliber have been unearthed, in addition to an surprisingly huge variety of unpretentious, strictly practical vessels that evoke the lifestyle in their vendors. the 1st component of the booklet surveys glass of the early Islamic interval in the course of the close to East, examines the excavation websites at Nishapur, and discusses the importance of the Nishapur glass findings. within the catalogue part, the several glass-decorating suggestions are defined and the glass items discovered at Nishapur are defined, illustrated in pictures and line drawings, and analyzed for type and effect, with supplementary illustrations and entire references to the scholarly literature. An appendix contributed by means of Robert H. Brill of the Corning Museum of Glass uses chemical analyses to shed extra mild at the glass discovered at Nishapur.

The booklet additionally incorporates a map and location plans, a word list, a concordance, and an in depth bibliography.

(This e-book used to be initially released in 1995/96.)

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Indeed, during the wet phase of the Early Holocene, which started at around 9,500 BP, fishing and the exploitation of other aquatic food resources played a large part in the economy of a vast area of the central and southern Sahara from the Nile Valley to Mali. Although hunting and gathering continued, the pre-eminence of fishing allowed larger populations to remain for longer periods of time at individual sites. Bone harpoon heads and dotted wavy line pottery were the characteristic artefacts of this development (Haaland 1992).

The low chronology is undermined by the fact that in cases of the superimposition of clearly definable styles, the Pastoral style lies over the Round Head style and therefore later. In several cases brightly coloured Pastoral cattle are depicted over faded Round Head compositions. The archaeological record also suggests that painting was practised before the advent of domestication. At Uan Afuda cave in the Acacus ten excavated grinding stones bear traces of red and yellow colours, and a wooden spatula with traces of red ochre was dated to 8,790 BP.

Whilst in the Acacus the forms are slightly more varied, in the Algerian Tadrart they show a very stereotyped shape. The figures are generally between 12 and 60 cm high and they are executed by carving or by very fine pecking. They consist of an oval body with four very short appendages, two lateral and two at the bottom, evoking arms and legs. In most cases they have a fifth appendage between the “legs” suggesting a penis and sometimes their limbs present three or four fingers. Sometimes they seem to represent social relations, such as a couple united by hands.