Erich F. Schmidt excavation records from Tepe Hissar, Iran

Archaeologist Erich F. Schmidt was born in Germany in 1897. He studied political science at Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin after serving in the German army in World War I. In 1923, Schmidt came to the United States, completing a Ph.D at Columbia University in 1929. While at Columbia, Schmidt joined the staff of the American Museum of Natural History. Schmidt’s position with the museum introduced him to William B. and Gertrude H. Thompson, who were to become his long-term benefactors, and to Fiske Kimball, Director of the Pennsylvania Museum of Art, which co-sponsored the Damghan Project. Schmidt became professor, and eventually professor emeritus, at the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago. At the time of his death in 1964, Dr. Schmidt was writing the third volume in a series on Persepolis.

Records concerning excavation at Tepe Hissar were grouped into subseries: general correspondence; reports and publications; field notes; drawings and plans; burial sheets; indexes and catalogs and financial records. For the most part, the original order has been maintained.

The general correspondence series includes as major correspondents Horace H. F. Jayne, the Director of the University Museum; Erich F. Schmidt, the Field Director of the Iranian Expedition; Arthur Upham Pope, the Director of the American Institute for Persian Art and Archaeology; Wilton M. Krogman of the Western Reserve University School of Medicine, Cleveland, Ohio; Mrs. William Boyce Thompson, the principal patroness of the Iranian Expedition, and E. Herzfeld. Schmidt's correspondence files appear to be arranged alphabetically by the last name of the correspondent, but the letters are sometimes signed only with a first name.

Schmidt's correspondence with colleagues and friends during his association with the University Museum is mixed with correspondence and financial records from Alishar Huyuk, a site in Turkey, which Schmidt excavated in the 1920's for the Oriental Institute, Chicago. These records were kept within the latter correspondence, so as not to disrupt the original order.

The field registers/catalogs and survey/architect notebooks should be used together to provide information concerning the provenience of objects. A Road Diary dated February, 1931, similar to one kept in the Fara subgroup, describes visits to sites of Schmidt and his crew in the vicinity of Fara and the trip from Baghdad to Damghan. The excavations focused on the burials in the mounds of these sites, and each one was documented with individual "X blanks" sheets, which illustrated and described the position of the remains, and the burial goods associated. Schmidt and his surveyor worked to reconstruct the structures built over many eras, but some of the survey documents were damaged by water and may not be useable.

The drawings and plans are notable for watercolors of some of the burials, of ceramics and other objects, and of the burned building. These are located in the print cabinet or flat files. In addition, there are ink drawings of Damghan scenes done by Ivan Gerasimoff (the painter of the watercolors), who Schmidt reports (1937:9) drew every recorded object.

Included within the indexes and catalogs subseries are two sets of photograph negative cards. One is arranged by object type and within this by field number and another duplicate set, arranged by photographic negative (P.E.) number. The numerically ordered set has the current Museum negative number written on the right corner of each card.

Publication Information: University of Pennsylvania: Penn Museum Archives, 1983

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Use Restrictions: Although many items from the archives are in the public domain, copyright may be retained by the authors of items in these papers, or their descendants, as stipulated by United States copyright law. The user is fully responsible for compliance with relevant copyright law.

Additional information concerning individual skeletons is available from the skeleton cards, arranged by University Museum accession number, but with a cross listing which relates the Hissar plot and burial numbers of each skeleton with the University Museum's accession number. Carbon copies of these are in the University Museum Registrar's Office.

Photographs recording Schmidt’s trips in Iran are in the photograph collections and are referenced in the Photograph Negative Card Catalog (c.f. Near East/Iran/T. Hissar/Indexes and Catalogs). For further information regarding the Hissar expedition, Schmidt's publications, particularly "Excavations at Tepe Hissar, Iran, 1931-1933" (1937), are very valuable. A more personal account of the experiences of the expedition staff is provided by a memoir of a staff member, L. Erskine White, "An Archaeological Journey to Persia", located in the reports and publications series.

In some cases, records concern Hissar and one or more of the sites in the Damghan area. Material which was easily separated out from the Hissar material was grouped into a separate series, named after the Damghan area sites: the Damghan Citadel, Tepe Muman, Tari(kh), Khaneh, Nareshan and Shir-e-Shian. Not all records were able to be separated, therefore all researchers of these sub-sites should check the Tepe Hissar records, particularly the field notes under field journals, in the course of their research.

A few documents pertaining to Tepe Hissar are located in the Director's Files of Horace Jayne (1929-1940). Subject headings include, for example, C. Warden 1932-1936, Persia State Department, Wallace Murray, and the Persian Institute. These refer to financial matters and the passage of the new antiquities law in Persia (ca. 1930). It must be stressed that the majority of the material which pertains to Tepe Hissar is located in the Near East Record Group.

For additional information concerning the change in antiquities laws in Persia and the preliminary research in regard to the Hissar project see the subseries Tureng Tepe under General Correspondence and the Director's Files Jayne (1929-1940) under F.R. Wulsin.

Additionally, records of the further expeditions of the Persian Expedition, which came to be sponsored by the Oriental Institute, can be accessed in their archives at the University of Chicago. They have records from Schimdt's excavations in the royal center of Persepolis, but also at the two prehistoric mounds of Tall-i Bakun, an Achaemenid tower and tombs of the Achaemenid kings at Naqsh-i Rustam, and portions of the Sasanian/Islamic city of Istakhr. In addition, Erich Schmidt led two air-reconnaissance and ground expeditions into the mountains of Luristan in 1935-36 and 1937, and The Oriental Institute has these negatives, as well. A description of their holdings may be found at: http://oi.uchicago.edu/research/projects/per/#Introduction

Form(s)/Genre(s)

• Correspondence
• Field notes
• Manuscripts for publication
• Maps
• Photographic prints
• Site plans

Geographic Name(s)

• Damghan (Iran)
• Tepe Hisar (Iran)

Personal Name(s)

• Kimball, Fiske, b. 1888-d. 1955
• Schmidt, Erich Friedrich, 1897-1964

Subject(s)

• Archaeology--Architecture, ancient
• Archaeology--Burials
• Damghan (Iran)--Antiquities
• Excavations (Archaeology)
• Iran--Antiquities