MEM Awards

Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 27 (2019): iii-ix

This acknowledgement of my work in Islamic archaeology comes as a complete surprise and therefore is 
all the more appreciated. It is with some 
humility that I would express my gratitude 
to Middle East Medievalists, especially as 
I had begun to wonder whether my field 
of studies had become irrelevant or just 
passé, a forgotten corner of Middle East 
studies. I will discuss this further but, 
first, I would offer a short account of my 
entrance into this arcane, if not irrelevant 
field of studies.

As an undergraduate, I wanted to study 
archaeology in the Middle East, and so I 
went to Iran with the Peace Corps (to 
experience the region and learn to teach). 
I returned to the University of Georgia 
to study with Joe Caldwell and worked 
on proto-Elamite ceramics from Tall-i 
Ghazir. He supported my move to Chicago 
to study urbanization with Robert Adams, 
who enabled me, in turn, to return to 
Iran to look for proto-Elamites in 1972. I 
conducted a survey in Fars province but 

found nothing except Islamic sites. During 
this time, I also worked at Siraf and realized 
that the same problems of urbanism could 
be studied in the Islamic period, with even 
more resources. When I told Adams of this 
decision, he was delighted, and, thereafter, 
I always counseled students to choose a 
subject that interested their advisor but 
one the latter has never done themselves.

My dissertation committee consisted 
of Robert Adams, Paul Wheatley, and 
Bob Braidwood. Bob Braidwood kept me 
sane at times when I realized that his 
promulgation of the study of prehistory 
was as unaccepted in his day as Islamic 
archaeology seems today. But it was 
Paul Wheatley who was a fundamental 
resource. He showed me his manuscript on 
the Islamic city, what would become The 
Places Where Men Pray Together (2002), 
and for about twenty years we met at least 
once a week. I would not have finished 
without his final advice. Adams did not 
like my thesis but could not explain why. 
Wheatley said the problem was simple:  

Remarks by the Recipient of the 2018 MEM Lifetime Achievement Award  
Given at the Annual Meeting of Middle East Medievalists  

(San Antonio, 15 November 2018)

Donald Whitcomb 
Research Associate Professor in Islamic Archaeology, 

The University of Chicago

(d-whitcomb@uchicago.edu)

mailto:d-whitcomb%40uchicago.edu?subject=


iv  •  DonalD Whitcomb

Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 27 (2019)

I had produced a deductive argument and 
Adams, being a social scientist, wanted an 
inductive argument. “Put your conclusions 
in front as hypotheses and write a new 
conclusion,” he suggested. I did so, adding 
no new ideas, and Adams accepted it 
immediately.

 In my thesis, “Trade and Tradition in 
Medieval Southern Iran” (1979), I describe 
Fars province in terms of the development 
of Islamic cities. I found that, in the field 
of Islamic archaeology, this was a new 
and rare approach that necessit at ed 
study of historical contexts as well as art 
historical resources. My study of Islamic 
archaeology began with potsherds in the 
collections of the Metropolitan Museum of 
Art (MMA) and elsewhere. While I believe 
this is the first and necessary concern for 
all archaeologists, I will make only light 
reference to it here.

I began fieldwork for the Oriental 
Institute of Chicago (OI) at Quseir al-Qadim, 
a medieval port on the Red Sea (excavated 
with my wife, Janet Johnson, from 1978 
until 1982). Quseir was not a place of great 
architecture, and, in fact, one of my first 
questions was whether it was inhabited 
year-round. We discovered much about 
the Roman port, but it became clear that 
the Islamic reoccupation, which followed 
a thousand-year period of abandonment, 
had only minimal housing, rather similar 
to coastal villages today. The Arab/Islamic 
occupation was explained in hundreds 
of merchants’ letters, which have been 
read and published by Li Guo (Commerce, 
Culture and Community in a Red Sea Port 
in the Thirteenth Century, 2004).

We next dug trenches in the mound 
of medieval Luxor in 1984–1985. This was 
an actual “tell” not unlike the mounded 
r e m a i n s  o f  a n c i e n t  s e t t l e m e n t s .  W e 

discovered the remnants of over two 
m i l l e n n i a  o f  o c c u p a t i o n  a t  L u x o r ,  a 
stratification revealed when the temple 
and avenue of the Sphinxes were cleared 
( a  d e s t r u c t i o n  t h a t  o c c u r r e d  a s  l a t e 
as the 1960s). We excavated two-step 
trenches that revealed a sequence from 
a fourteenth-century floor back to a 
Byzantine painted room (with a sculpture 
collection of different periods, including a 
head of Tuthmosis III). 

Beginning in 1986, Jan and I spent 
almost a decade discovering and exploring 
the port of Aqaba in Jordan. The port 
recalls the attack scene in the movie 
Lawrence of Arabia (1962), a portrayal that 
conveys only about one-tenth of the actual 
scale and was filmed on the southern 
coast of Spain. In his written account,  
T. E. Lawrence writes of finding “Arab 
pottery” and of being told of sub-surface 
walls in 1914. We delineated the walled 
city and four meters of changes from the 
Islamic conquest to the advent of the 
Crusaders. The mosque, the administrative 
center, the suq, and other aspects of this 
Islamic urban center became clear and are 
still being studied today. The information 
and artifacts are now displayed in a site 
museum, and Aqaba is today a major 
tourist attraction for Jordan.

An opportunity then presented itself 
t o  e x c a v a t e  t h e  s i t e  o f  Q i n n a s r i n  i n 
northern Syria near Aleppo. I teamed up 
with Marianne Barrucand and Claus-Peter 
Haase for a small but international venture 
(1998–2000). We avoided the very large 
tell of Qinnasrin and excavated the early 
Islamic village called Hadir, literally the 
“camp.” Perhaps our most important find 
was a house that has been converted from 
a traditional tent, literally a “settlement” 
of the Muslims.



Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 27 (2019)

 Remarks by the Recipient of the 2018 MEM Lifetime Achievement Award  •  v

Events from 2001 onwards have made 
fieldwork more difficult and have provided 
a prompt to catch up with publications 
( B r a i d w o o d  o n c e  f o u n d  a  g r o u p  o f 
archaeology students and counseled us, 
“Archaeology would be a fine occupation, 
if one did not have to publish”). I took 
part in, and organized, a great variety of 
lectures and conferences, including the 
first OI seminar, which resulted in the 
publication of Changing Social Identity 
with the Spread of Islam: Archaeological 
Perspectives (2004). That same year, I was 
invited to Iran and examined a series of 
sites for possible excavations.1 I settled on 
a return to the Islamic city of Istakhr, near 
Persepolis. Funds and permissions were 
obtained and a team selected in 2005, but 
the final permits were denied. Visits to 
Saudi Arabia yielded potential for digging 
at Jurash in the Asir, but again no permit 
was obtained.  

I began discussions for an excavation 
with Hamdan Taha, director of archaeology 
for the Palestinian Authority, in 2007. We 
agreed on a joint project at the famous 
site of Khirbat al-Mafjar in Jericho, which 
lasted from 2011 until 2015. The site 
was well known from Dimitri Baramki’s 
e x c a v a t i o n s  ( 1 9 3 5 – 1 9 4 8 ) ,  w h i c h  h a d 
uncovered a palace and a bath hall highly 
decorated with mosaics and stucco work 
of the early Islamic period. I was invited 

1.  For some background on archaeology in Iran, especially in the 1920s and 1930s, see D. Whitcomb, 
“Archaeology in Iran and the Experience of Arthur Upham Pope,” in Arthur Upham Pope and A New Survey 
of Persian Art, ed. Y. Kadoi, 97–109 (Leiden, Brill, 2016).

2.  D. Whitcomb, M. Jennings, A. Creekmore, and I. Arce, “Khirbet al-Mafjar: New Excavations and 
Hypotheses for an Umayyad Monument,” Near Eastern Archaeology 79 (2016): 78–87; D. Whitcomb, “The 
Mosques of Mafjar: A Sequence and Some Implications for Understanding Qasr Hisham,” Proceedings of the 
9th International Congress of the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East: Islamic Session, ed. D. Genequand, 
2:469–78 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2016); D. Whitcomb, “Notes for an Archaeology of Muʿāwiya: Material 
Culture in the Transitional Period of the Believers,” in Christians and Others in the Umayyad State, ed. A. 
Borrut and F. M. Donner, 11–27 (Chicago: Oriental Institute, 2016).

by the Palestinian Authority to explore 
the Northern Area. This was a building 
complex that had been excavated by 
Awni Dajani in the 1950s, but no records 
or artifacts are extant. We recovered an 
original Umayyad building complex, later 
transformed into an Abbasid agricultural 
estate.2 This was the urban focus later 
transferred to the nearby town of Jericho 
(located near the biblical site).

Our work with the Palestinian Authority 
resulted in the creation of an archaeolog-
ical park, featuring a museum designed by 
Jack Green and specialists from the OI. All 
of these endeavors were enabled through 
massive USAID funding using Palestinian 
designers and craftsmen. When we opened 
the museum, several Palestinian colleagues 
stated, “We can do this, too, and much 
cheaper.” Now there are several more and 
far less expensive museums in Palestine. 
This is the best sort of aid program and 
might be a model for future ventures.

When I started the project at Khirbat 
al-Mafjar, I mentioned the site to the 
Islamic studies faculty at the University 
of Chicago. With the exception of Fred 
Donner, they were totally innocent of 
archaeological knowledge, to the extent of 
being unfamiliar with the name “Mafjar” 
and its importance for Islamic studies, 
though most did recognize the name 
“Jericho.” As I discussed in a plenary paper 



vi  •  DonalD Whitcomb

Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 27 (2019)

at the sixth International Congress for 
the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East 
(ICAANE) in 2010, there is an evident lack 
of definition of “Islamic archaeology” in 
the minds of almost all historians, many 
other archaeologists, and not a few of 
those claiming to belong to this field. 

 
Islamic Archaeology as a New Research 
Discipline

I describe my research on Islamic cities 
to show the range of types of sites that 
may be investigated, from untouched 
p l a c e s  t o  p r e v i o u s  e x c a v a t i o n s .  T h e 
study of Islamic urbanization is only one 
of many possible specializations within 
Islamic archaeology. From the context 
of Near Eastern archaeology at the OI, 
we use fieldwork to elucidate the rise of 
Near Eastern civilization by tracing cities 
and states, and their religions, especially 
relationships with the biblical tradition. 
It may seem strange now, but the study 
of prehistory began with the research of 
Robert Braidwood, and this field was not 
readily accepted. Likewise, the study of 
medieval archaeology in the Near East 
experiences only slow growth.

There is a growing awareness that 
Islamic materials provide a connector 
to the past, showing the continuation of 
most ancient accomplishments unique 
to the Near East. The Islamic material 
also provides a connector to the present, 
m a k i n g  a r c h a e o l o g y  r e l e v a n t  a n d 
important to modern Middle Eastern 
studies. Yet the academic niche of Islamic 
archaeology is often misunderstood; the 
analysis of Islamic monuments and other 
artifacts is usually read as the province 
of art history. But the techniques and  
 

approaches of art history, beyond its focus 
on aesthetic valuation, are quite different.

I s l a m i c  a r c h a e o l o g y  i s  p r a c t i c e d 
as a historical archaeology, providing 
evidence for the development of society 
and economy in Islamic contexts. Each 
project, whatever its intended goals, 
produces informative assemblages of 
artifacts that can be compared to relevant 
textual sources. The field lacks a clear 
mandate and anything approaching a 
guiding textbook. The result has been a 
wide range of interpretations of context 
and methodology. Like other fields that 
grew in the OI from comparative analyses 
of different sites and regions, this new 
research field illuminates processes of 
adaptation and development that define 
this part of the Near (or rather, Middle) 
East.

Previous recipients of the MEM Lifetime 
Achievement award offer a number of 
insights into what this award may mean, 
e s p e c i a l l y  i n  r e l a t i o n s h i p  t o  I s l a m i c 
archaeology. One of the most pertinent 
sets of remarks is also the most recent: 
that of Suzanne Stetkevych (2017), who 
speaks of the problematics of poetry and 
history. She begins by stating that “poetic 
materials should be more stable, and 
therefore more authentic than the prose 
narratives that have come down to us.... 
So, we may have a body of material that 
is authentic, but... does not provide the 
information that historians are looking 
for—or at least, not in the form we are 
looking for.... It is not meant to record 
names and dates and battle descriptions, 
rather... for further exploration as we 
deal with political, religious and cultural 
history” (Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 26 [2018]:  
viii–ix).



Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 27 (2019)

 Remarks by the Recipient of the 2018 MEM Lifetime Achievement Award  •  vii

If the study of archaeology may be 
compared with poetry, one must examine 
more carefully the definition of this field. 
When Fred Donner, the award recipient 
in 2016, states that “archaeology... has 
received a great deal of attention and has 
brought important insights” (Al-ʿUṣūr 
al-Wusṭā 25 [2017]: vi), he gives a vague 
acknowledgment without really exploring 
what the field might have contributed. 
One might suspect that when Patricia 
Crone, the 2014 recipient, first wanted to 
be an Ancient Near Eastern archaeologist 
(Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 23 [2015]: iii), she may 
have been misled as to the nature of the 
field (alas, what contributions she might 
have made!). And finally, when Richard 
Bulliet, the 2015 recipient, complains that 
“the innovative methodologies that are 
showing such promise in the study of most 
other parts the world, such as quantitative 
history, climate history, and material 
history in general, are still little explored 
with respect to the Middle East” (Al-ʿUṣūr 
al-Wusṭā 24 [2016]: vi), one may be sure 
that he has not included the progress in 
Islamic archaeology.

One might begin with the misunder-
standings that historians sometimes have 
about ceramics, in particular the penchant 
that archaeologists have for little sherds. 
These artifacts form the language of 
archaeology. One might view the sherd 
as analogous to the “phoneme,” a basic 
sound that might occasionally convey 
meaning. One must turn to the pot (or 
other complete piece) to have the equiv-
alent to a “word,” a complex element full 
of meaning or uses. More importantly, 
artifacts should be found together in an 

3.  See M. L. Rautman, “Archaeology and Byzantine Studies,” Byzantinische Forschungen 15 (1990): 147, 
151.

“assemblage,” which may be considered 
the material equivalent to the sentence. An 
archaeological assemblage has interpre-
tative meaning(s) based on find location 
and contexts, that is, natural and cultural 
factors.

This linguistic analogy suggests that 
archaeology, the study of material culture, 
has a distinctive methodology. The study 
of artifacts focuses on the idea that 
artifacts are found in a context or matrix 
that reflexively amplifies the meaning 
of each element. It also sees artifacts as 
correlative in that their physical elements 
may be abstracted to form categories or 
typologies to facilitate comparisons. 
Comparative studies, in turn, result in 
generalizing abstractions aimed at patterns 
of assemblages. Artifactual patterns are the 
basic tool of archaeology, interpretations 
from which wider inferences or social 
history may be postulated.

Interpretations, on the macrosocial 
plane of political events and cultural 
transformations or the microsocial level of 
private affairs and domestic routines,3 are 
a necessary element in this methodology. 
This is because archaeology is never 
isolated but rather interacts with other 
studies of particular cultural complexes. 
I n t e r p r e t a t i o n s  o f  a r c h a e o l o g i c a l 
information may then be utilized by 
h i s t o r i a n s  a n d  o t h e r s  f o r  p a r t i c u l a r 
information, building reflexive inferences 
for other archaeological patterns, and 
ultimately archaeological theory building.

The study of archaeology, following 
such a methodology, begins with a concern 
for the excavations or other field proce-
dures that produced the evidence. This 



viii  •  DonalD Whitcomb

Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 27 (2019)

means concern with the narrator, the 
archaeologist who has molded the material, 
and thus his or her background, orienta-
tion, presuppositions, and purposes. These 
factors may not be accessible but must be 
borne in mind during any evaluation. Such 
evaluations may be normal in scholarly 
research, but the esoteric nature of ideas 
derived from digging may be especially 
vulnerable to misunderstanding, or indeed 
misrepresentation.

The first MEM Lifetime Achievement 
award was given to George T. Scanlon 
in 1998. Curiously, there is no record of 
Scanlon’s remarks on being presented the 
award, and, indeed, notice of the award 
seems to have escaped the attention 
of Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā. The publication, 
initially the newsletter of the Middle 
East Medievalists begun by Fred Donner 
and Sam Gellens , carried in it s  firs t 
years (1992–1995) three to six articles 
on archaeology or art historical subjects. 
Thereafter, Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā consistently 
included two articles in these fields each 
year between 1996 and 2009, during which 
time I had the honor of being the journal’s 
“editorial assistant (archaeology).” This 
listing continued with the reorganization 
in 2014, though no articles on archaeology 
have appeared between that date and the 
present. A possible explanation might 
be the launch of the Journal of Islamic 
Archaeology in that same year (2014), 
though one may also suspect a change 
in the orientation of Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 
(ironically, the change happened in the 
same year in which Scanlon died).

4.  An approach to this dialogue is the subject of my comments in “Toward a ‘Common Denominator’: An 
Archaeological Response to M. Morony on Pottery and Urban Identities,” in Identity and Material Culture in 
the Early Islamic World, ed. I. Bierman, 47–68 (Los Angeles: Von Grunebaum Center, 1995).

Turning to the relationship between 
archaeology and the field of Mamluk 
s t u d i e s ,  I  w o u l d  l i k e  t o  s t r e s s  t h a t , 
to paraphrase a recent discussion by 
Rautman, Mamluk artifacts are more than 
mere historical illustration; their evidence 
may be considered necessary to overcome 
the intrinsic limitations of the written 
evidence. Throughout Rautman’s seminal 
a r t i c l e  “ A r c h a e o l o g y  a n d  B y z a n t i n e 
Studies,” one may substitute “Islamic” 
for “Byzantine” to produce an insightful 
picture of the history and state of this 
parallel discipline. Yet historians of the 
Mamluk period do not seem to be aware 
of this potential or able to assess the 
relevance of fieldwork to their research. 
Much of the fault for this separation in 
disciplinary comprehension lies with the 
archaeologist, and with what is currently 
practiced as archaeology.4 

The role of archaeological evidence in 
historical research is often misunderstood 
because of the nature of its evidential base. 
Although the study of material culture 
deals, at least in part, with physical objects, 
their contribution to historical studies is 
no more “real” or direct than is that of the 
historian’s more traditional documents; 
archaeological evidence is cumulative and 
not specific. In other words, one should 
not expect new information about specific 
individuals or historic events. Though 
n e w  d o c u m e n t s  m a y  b e  d i s c o v e r e d , 
archaeological research is more concerned 
with patterns, repeating contexts, and 
associations. Thus, one may seek patterns 
of land use (historical geography) and  
 



Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 27 (2019)

 Remarks by the Recipient of the 2018 MEM Lifetime Achievement Award  •  ix

social organization (settlement systems), 
that is, broad questions of social and 
economic history. 

Be that as it may, one may only hope 
that a lifetime achievement award does 
not mark the closure of research. Last year 
I returned to Khirbet al-Karak on the Sea 
of Galilee, where the OI dug in the 1950s, 
to reveal that the very early Islamic site of 
Sinnabra was an early Islamic palace next 
to a mosque (I hope one of the earliest to be 
physically revealed).5 We came to style the 
project as “the search for the mosque of 
Muʿāwiya.” Indeed, that pivotal personality 
in early Islamic history might have been 
sympathetic to the structure of a project 
led by Prof. Tawfiq Da’adli, a Palestinian 
teaching at the Hebrew University, with 
collaborators from Chicago and Tel Aviv, 
employing local Palestinian workmen.6 

A Return to Iran

While at the MMA, I studied the old 
e x c a v a t i o n s  a t  Q a s r - i  A b u  N a s r ,  t h e 
Sasanian and early Islamic site near Shiraz. 
I used the Istakhr records at the OI in my 
dissertation and was ready to return to an 
excavation in Istakhr in 2005, but it was 
canceled at the last moment.

A recent article shares my ideas on 
S a s a n i a n  c i t i e s . 7 B e g i n n i n g  w i t h  J u r 
(Firuzabad), the urban plan was laid out 
in circles, with radiating roads (some 
extending 5 km beyond the walls): twenty 
 

5.  D. Whitcomb, “Sinnabra (or Khirbat al-Karak),” in The Oriental Institute 2017–2018 Annual Report, 
145–53 (Chicago: University of Chicago, Oriental Institute, 2018).

6.  See T. Da’adli, “Stratigraphy and Architecture of the Fortified Palace,” in Bet Yerah, vol. 3: Hellenistic 
Philotera and Islamic al-Sinnabra, ed. R. Greenberg, O. Tal, and T. Da’adli, 133–78 (Jerusalem: IAA Reports 61, 
2017).

7.  D. Whitcomb, “‘From Shahristan to Medina’ Revisited,” in Cities of Medieval Iran: Sites, Society, Politics 
and Culture, ed. D. Durand-Guedy and R. Mottahehdeh, 77–99 (Leiden: Brill, 2018).

sectors, axial streets, gates, and a central 
district with the tirbal and Takht-i Nishin 
(the city having a diameter of 2 km, the 
central district a diameter of 400 m). The 
circular cities of Ardashir (224–242 CE) 
are not all known. His son built Bishapur, 
again with reliefs nearby, and a fort near 
the entrance to the city. The royal quarter 
with temples was laid out in a rectangular 
grid, but one may also note a grey circular 
area on the air photograph. This was near 
the Bab Shahr, forming a circle (400 m in 
diameter) centered on the northern limit 
of the grid city.

One may, finally, mention the city 
of Jundi Shapur, investigated by Robert 
Adams for the OI in 1962–63. This city was 
famed for its blackboard grid, a design 
said to imitate Antioch. A Corona satellite 
image shows this grid, and within it one 
can see the circular city, again 2 km in 
diameter. It follows that one should also 
find a tirbal and an administrative center 
(would that we might take a quick field 
trip!). One reads that Shapur found many 
of his father’s cities in disrepair and 
rebuilt them, superimposing a western, 
Antiochian model. This became, then, 
a combination of urban traditions and 
possibly institutions. When I visited Iran in 
2015, the director of Antiquities said to me, 
“You are going to excavate Jundi Shapur!” 
I replied, “Inshallah,” and I retain that 
hope today.