RESEARCH PROFILE
Dr. Irene Good, Associate of the Peabody Museum, Harvard University
My areas of research are threefold:
· The later prehistory of Iran and Central Asia
· Interdisciplinary investigation on the origins and archaeology of silk and wool
· The intersection between subjective and objective approaches to material culture
The prehistoric archaeology of Iran and Central Asia, particularly within the Indo-Iranian borderlands during the fourth through the second millennia BC, has a culture history not yet well known. This region is of great interest because of its very different development of the urban form when compared with ancient Mesopotamia or Egypt. Greater Iran, from the southwestern parts of ancient Persia (Fars) to the rugged northeastern Pamir Range in Tajikistan, is a region that for millennia has been very much bound up in the long distance exchange of materials, particularly of precious stone such as lapis lazuli. This exchange is a critical factor in the material cultural manifestations and transformations through time, particularly exemplified by the phenomenon known as 'Intercultural Style'.
A second research area centers on the question of detecting evidence for fiber use in prehistory via the novel application of biochemical study of degraded archaeological fiber proteins. Two major projects are currently underway:
Safavid Jacket from the Iran Bastan Museum, Tehran
The Silk Project
The ultimate goal of this project is to answer important archaeological questions concerning the nature, extent and antiquity of early sericulture.
According to historical tradition, silk weaving was a Chinese technological development carefully kept within the borders of China. Early evidence for the use of silk in textile manufacture comes from a late neolithic site in the Zhejiang province of southern China (Qianshanyang,) ca. the mid-third millennium BC. Archaeological textile fragments from this site are purported to be of a silk derived from cocoons of the domesticated silkmoth Bombyx mori. Official government-sanctioned silk trade from China into western Asia took place no earlier than the Han Dynasty in the late third century BC. However, there are a few archaeological occurrences of silk preceding this date by several centuries, found well beyond the borders of Han China (for full review of the evidence, see Good 1995). Among examples is a well-known silk embroidery fragment from a 7th century BC elite burial in the Baden-Wurtemberg region of Germany known as the Hohmichele, discovered in the 1930s. This find is often cited as evidence for Chinese luxury goods moving west in ancient exchange networks. More examples exist as well, such as silk from a grave from Nevassa in northern India dating to 1400 BC.
In assessing the significance of this early evidence for silk, a critical factor to be considered is the use of wild silk, which must have preceded the domestication of silkworms. There are several economically viable wild silkworm species, some of which are home not to China, but to South Asia, for example SATURNIIDAE Antheraea assamensis, and A. mylitta. Conventional procedures for the study of ancient silk fragments are based on morphological observations, however this often hampered by poor preservation. The biochemical structure of the filament protein, fibroin, however, is particularly amenable to study in a degraded state. The application of biochemical techniques for detecting and identifying archaeological silk proteins has been developed (Good and Kim 1994; Good 1995). Examining the amino acid composition of the silk fibers along with observing their morphology through scanning electron microscopy, allows for a more precise identification of silk, as the species of silkmoth from which the silk derived can be deduced.
The specific short-term goals of this project are to continue collecting textile samples with good context from within museum collections and recent excavations, in order to build a database of early silk evidence for the Indus region, and then incorporate this growing corpus of evidence with that of Inner Eurasia and China for a more complete picture of early sericulture. Through this study, a better understanding of the development of this important material will emerge, and an appreciation of the critical role played in its development by prehistoric peoples of Eurasia.
Scottish Blackface grazing in Ardnamurchan, Inner Hebrides
The Origins of Wool Project
This research is in the developmental stage, but follows a similar research strategy to the Silk Project. We are first working with known areas of the sheep genome (now fully sequenced) which help determine the quality of pelt on sheep, and working with extant vestigial sheep breeds and non-fleece-bearers, it will be possible to isolate a genetic signature which can be found in the PCR-sequenced fragments from collagen of archaeological faunal remains. It is hoped that a database can be built up from important Near Eastern and Central Asian sites (such as Aq Kupruk in Afghanistan, Abu Hureira in Syria, Çayonu and Çatal Hüyük in Turkey), to determine when and where the earliest wooly fleece developed. The development of wool is a pivotally important aspect of what Andrew Sherratt termed the 'Secondary Products Revolution'. Knowledge of the extent and timing of its use in prehistory is critical for our better understanding of the sequence of economic and social factors relating to the rise of civilization in the Ancient World.
Finally, a more theoretical aspect of my research interests lies in the union of what are traditionally treated as separate, even opposing approaches to the study of the past through material remains: that of materials science and of social archaeology, a more semiotic approach:
Closeup view of traditional upright carpet loom, with knotted pile rug in progress, with design cartoon.
A Social Archaeology of Cloth
The archaeologies of material culture and of social practice reflect contrasting approaches to studying the past that have been divergent for the past several decades. This divergence, in fact, has deep intellectual roots. The material, empirical approach relies heavily on materials science and embraces the objectivity of scientific method for understanding the archaeological record; while the other, having questioned the reliability of objectivity in the complex domain of past human behaviour, strives towards understanding societies through a focus on the symbolic nature of material culture. My research offers connectivity between materials science and semiotic approaches to the study of material culture. It is proposed here that these approaches are not only compatible, but are actually mutually necessary to gain a more complete understanding of the past. Between these two approaches to prehistoric archaeological research, the study of cloth holds a privileged place. Cloth, as well as its production and exchange, are topics of central cultural importance, and have been noted as such in ethnographies from the very beginnings of anthropology, such as in Malinowski's study of the kula. This is because it is universal practice that social groups and social stations within groups are marked by cloth, clothing and modes of dress. The way we live and how we identify ourselves are most intimately connected with what we wear. How cloth is made and of what it is made each contribute to the symbolic potency of the material; thus our ability to recognize these factors in degraded archaeological cloth fragments is of utmost value in interpreting their social meanings. The outcome of this effort will be a volume addressing the archaeology of textile arts in the later prehistory of Central Asia, specifically during the transition to iron-using economies. This work will not only bring archaeological textiles more visibly into the mainstream of archaeological materials science, but also to bring their contextual study into current discussion of material culture, semiotics and the formation of identity.
Intercultural Style' chlorite weight ca mid-third millennium BC. Iran Bastan Museum, Tehran.
Tarim Basin Mummies Project
Although Xinjiang is considered a very remote region, archaeological work in the Uyghur Autonomous Region of China began in the early days of the discipline of archaeology, commencing with the joint Sino-Swedish Expedition initiated by the explorer Sven Hedin in 1893. In the beginning of the 20th century, sensational discovery was made by Bergman and Stein of well-preserved ancient remains. More recently many more discoveries have been made by Chinese archaeologists along the eastern Tarim Basin and along the southern rim of the Taklamakan Desert. Extraordinarily well-preserved organic remains from mortuary and settlement sites, including mummified bodies, are scattered along the outer oasis-laden rim of the Tarim Basin in Xinjiang, ranging in date from ca. 2000 BCE to the late first millennium AD. More recent work in the Tarim Basin is yielding important new data, helping to build a sound chronological framework and more complete artifact typologies for the region. It is now also possible to begin to tie in the archaeological record from neighboring regions, particularly the Ferghana region of eastern Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, the Pamirs, southern Kazakhstan, Gansu and Qinghai. Refined models for cultural interaction, affinity, and horizon are thus emerging around the Tarim region. New analysis of the mortuary patterns and evaluation of recent advances in the archaeology of Xinjiang suggest a revision of the so-called 'oasis model' of cultural development in prehistoric Xinjiang.
Completing manuscript: 'Cloth and Carpet in Early Inner Asia' for Brill Inner Asia Series
References:
Good, Irene, 1995. On the Question of Silk in Pre-Han Eurasia Antiquity 69:945-958.
Good, Irene and E.J. Kim, 1994. Research Report on the Silk Project ms on file, University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (Research supported by the University of Pennsylvania Research Foundation).