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Ezatollah Negahban (Persian:عزتالله نگهبان; March 1, 1926 – 2 February 2009[1]) was an Iranianarchaeologist known as the father ofIranian modernarchaeology.[2]
Prof. Ezat O. Negahban was bornAhvaz,Iran. After graduating fromFirouz Bahram High School,[2] In 1949 he finished his BA in archaeology at theUniversity of Tehran and in 1954 he received his MA in archaeology from theUniversity of Chicago, after completing his thesis under Donald McCown. He was appointedassociate professor in the Department of Archaeology, University of Tehran, in 1955, and was made afull Professor in 1962. He served as chairman of the department from 1967 to 1978, and as Dean of the Faculty of Letters and Humanities from 1975 to 1979. He wasTechnical Director of the Iranian Archaeological Service from 1960 to 1965, and served as Technical Advisor of the Iranian Ministry of Culture from 1965 to 1979. He served as a VisitingCurator at the University Museum of theUniversity of Pennsylvania from 1980 until 2000.
He was chief scientist in many excavations onIranian ancient sites includingMarlik, nearRudbar,Haft Tepe, nearSusa and Ahvaz, where he founded a museum to showcase artifacts from the site, and on the plane ofHamadan province, where a training center for students was established.
Among the critical contributions of Prof. Negahban to Iranian archaeology were his reforms to the curriculum of the Department of Archaeology at the University of Tehran, and the founding of the Institute of Archaeology. While he introduced and encouraged a more scientific approach to the field from the time he was appointed to the Department of Archaeology in 1956, starting in 1967, when he became chairman of the department, he reworked the curriculum around a significant component of fieldwork, mandatory for all students starting in 1970–1971. To facilitate this he established a base-camp of the department's field school on the Qazvin Plain at the site of a restored Safavidcaravanserai, and secured a long-term permit to conduct field work from the Archaeological Service of Iran. Having introduced a significant practical component to the department, he introduced a Master's program, including further fieldwork at the Haft Tepe excavation inKhuzestan province during the winter seasons. The Institute for Archeology, which he founded in 1959 and where he served as Director until 1979, played a critical role in these improvements by providing instructors and students with office space, and laboratory and library facilities to analyse the results of fieldwork and publish articles. He built on these successes by securing scholarships for the pursuit of PhDs by students abroad.
He was also a good friend of British archaeologist SirMax Mallowan, former widower ofAgatha Christie.
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