popularization of Iranian art and archaeology on an international level. Laudable as these achievements were, they were largely self-serving, and there was virtually no provision for the training of Iranians who could conduct independent archaeological research, staff museums, or educate the next generation.

Throughout most of Godard’s tenure, the only Iranians involved in excavations were those working for antiquities dealers and, up until the 1950s, only three Iranians (Mahdi Bahrami, Issa Behnami, and Mohsen Moqaddam) managed to obtain doctorates in Iranian art and archaeology from French universities. Some excavations initiated by the IAS (e.g., Hasanlu and Khurvin) were, from an Iranian point of view, arbitrarily transferred to foreign projects. There was also a vigorous illegal trade in antiquities, and much material ended up in the british museum, the Louvre, and numerous other museums and private collections. In 1959 alone, the Louvre bought 500 Luristan bronzes from Jacques Coiffard, the French ambassador in Tehran—the question of provenance was never raised.

Other Foreign Projects

In 1931, the oriental institute of the University of Chicago (OIC) began a major archaeological project in Fars with the Achaemenid capital of Persepolis as the main focus and headquarters. Excavations at Persepolis and neighboring sites were directed by Ernst Herzfeld (1931–1934) and Erich Schmidt (1934–1939). The OIC subsequently undertook other projects, including aerial and ground surveys, in the mountains of Luristan and elsewhere in Iran between 1935 and 1937. Brief excavations were made at over a dozen sites. Also in 1931, the university of pennsylvania museum (UM) began two important projects in the little-explored northeastern part of Iran.

During the 1930s, there were few foreign expeditions apart from those of the major players, the French and the Americans. Aurel Stein (Harvard University and the British Museum) made four trips between 1932 and 1936 visiting and testing numerous sites in southeastern (Kerman, Baluchistan, and Fars) and western Iran, and he identified numerous ancient sites, such as Hasanlu, that subsequently became archaeologically famous. A Swedish expedition led by T.J. Arne investigated Shah Tepe in the Gurgan Plain in 1933. Although the situation in the 1930s can be described as considerably improved, there was no coordination of international efforts, excavation methods remained fairly crude, and programs of excavation, while sometimes sustained, were not at all systematic. The decade of research prior to World War II threw isolated and random shafts of light on the development of Iran from the Neolithic to the Achaemenid period, and in no region was there anything approaching a complete sequence.

However, great strides had been made. For example, Herzfeld’s 1934 Schweich Lectures on the archaeological history of Iran, over 100 pages in length, devoted only 8 pages to the pre-Median and pre-Achaemenid eras (Herzfeld 1935). Seven years later, D.C. McCown (1942) needed over 60 pages to synthesize the comparative stratigraphy of the prehistoric periods of north-central, western, and southwestern Iran even though some areas were still relatively unexplored. The prehistory of northwestern Iran was disposed of in a single page, and southeastern Iran was not mentioned. World War II and internal conditions in Iran brought a second hiatus in foreign fieldwork.

The Post–World War II Period: 1945–1979

The accidental discovery of the fabulous early-first-millennium-b.c. golden hoard at Ziwiyeh in northern Kurdistan in 1947 gained widespread international interest, but foreign fieldwork still recommenced rather slowly after World War II. The French returned to Susa promptly enough in 1946 under a new director, Roman Ghirshman, who held the post until 1967 when he was succeeded by Jean Perrot (1967–1990), who introduced modern stratigraphic methods there. The British returned to the field in 1948, and the IAS was increasingly active following the completion of work at Persepolis. The IAS were joined by a Japanese team led by Norio Egami (Tokyo University) in 1956, and in 1957, Robert Dyson, Jr., led a UM team back to Iran.

In the two decades between 1959 and 1979, archaeology flourished in Iran perhaps more