Henry Colburn
I am a scholar of Near Eastern, Egyptian, and above all Persian art, archaeology and history, with a background in ancient Greece and Rome. Much of my research has focused ancient Iran, and on the regions of the Near East, Eastern Mediterranean, and Central Asia that interacted with Iran prior to the advent of Islam. But I have also worked on a wide range of material, including Egyptian sculpture and temple decoration, Greek and Iranian coins, Attic red-figure and Etruscan bucchero pottery, Urartian bronzes and Greek, Parthian, Sasanian and Gandharan drinking vessels. I am especially interested in reconstructing the social, cultural, political and even economic environments in which objects were created. I am also interested in how our modern knowledge of the ancient world was created, since this affects how we interpret objects and the conclusions we draw about the people who made them.
I have had fellowships at the Getty Research Institute and the Bard Graduate Center and curatorial positions at the Harvard Art Museums and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I have taught at the University of California, Irvine, the University of Southern California, the University of California, Riverside, New York University, Hofstra University, the Bard Prison Initiative, Baruch College of the City of University of New York and the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art. I am currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology at Bryn Mawr College.
You can learn more at my website: https://henrycolburn.hcommons.org/
Supervisors: Margaret Cool Root
I have had fellowships at the Getty Research Institute and the Bard Graduate Center and curatorial positions at the Harvard Art Museums and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I have taught at the University of California, Irvine, the University of Southern California, the University of California, Riverside, New York University, Hofstra University, the Bard Prison Initiative, Baruch College of the City of University of New York and the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art. I am currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology at Bryn Mawr College.
You can learn more at my website: https://henrycolburn.hcommons.org/
Supervisors: Margaret Cool Root
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In 1942 Sir Aurel Stein acquired a copper-and-bronze rhyton in the form of a centaur in the Gilgit Agency of the British Raj; his estate later bequeathed it to the Ashmolean Museum (acc. no. EA1963.28). The rhyton has been dated variously to the fourth through first centuries BCE on the grounds that its form exhibits Greek, Saka, or Indo-Scythian affinities. This paper argues that the rhyton’s function as a drinking vessel best fits an Achaemenid context for its origin, since rhyta originated in the Achaemenid Empire, where they served as markers of elite status and were widely imitated.
A group of coins excavated at Qasr-e Abu Nasr, Shiraz, in south-central Iran, now in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, was studied and analyzed to examine the minting processes and to reconsider the numismatic history of the site. For this purpose, forty-three gold-, silver-, and copper-based coins were studied and analyzed by micro-X-ray fluorescence, scanning electron microscopy, energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, and metallographic techniques. The results of the analyses showed a wide range of alloy compositions. The gold coins are comprised of impure gold and electrum, while the silver coins are made of either near pure silver or debased silver copper. The copper-based coins are struck from a range of alloys, namely impure copper, tin bronze, leaded copper, and high-leaded tin bronze, closely correlated to the date and place of minting. The results of this interdisciplinary study provide new insights into the archaeology of Qasr-e Abu Nasr, as well as present new information about the history of minting on the Iranian Plateau.