Dr. Omran Garazhian

• The second group of my experience consists of anthropological approaches (the study of cultural materials and human behaviour, as well as ethnoarchaeological interviews and archaeology of the recent past) through research and humanitarian activities within contemporary disaster-affected communities. I began this work after the 2003 Bam earthquake in southeastern Iran and continued it over two decades. Within this research activity, together with practical training in field research, the study of cultural materials, alongside observation of human behaviour in crisis contexts and complementary interviews, began in Bam and was completed on Qeshm Island (Iran), in northern Pakistan, and in the Azad Kashmir region. In this experience, together with a broad group of colleagues and with the support of the UNESCO office in Iran and the World Research Base in the city of Bam, we introduced an innovative method for studying human communities in crisis contexts.
• The third group of my research activities consists of garbology studies in Sweden, which began in 2021 on the island of Öland and in Småland, focusing on disposal patterns, particularly food waste, in southeastern Sweden, and ultimately continued with the study of the impact of shipworms on wooden cultural heritage.

In my research, I generally adopt a long-term archaeological–anthropological perspective. By “anthropological” in practice, I mean that I observe and investigate human societies in any period and region of the world through four complementary lenses. These four are:

1. Settlement systems: structures, materials, and associated contexts.
2. Subsistence strategies.
3. Technologies and patterns observable in materials and contexts.
4. Traditions and abstract patterns such as language, religion, culture, and even the organization of governments, which fall within this fourth perspective.

I generally begin my research with practical and field-based experiences and experiments; it is through these experiences that appropriate methods are identified in relation to the data. Research in crisis-affected contexts has taught me that the conditions in which human societies exist, both in the past and the present, fall into two general states: normal life routines and abnormal routines, or life under crisis conditions. In my research, the stages, patterns, and models of transition of human societies (both contemporary and historical) from crisis conditions (post-crisis) to normal routines after crisis are considered and investigated.

Now, in the project “Vikings and Khorasan: Urban Interaction across the Central Asian Steppes: An Anthropological-Archaeological Study within the Viking World,” I have begun this work in order to see what can be done in practice.

In this research, I consider the peak expansionism and incursions of the Islamic Empire and the Vikings within the approximate period 750–1050 CE. These two: Vikings and Muslims, had different spheres of operation and action strategies: Muslim armies possessed long-standing skill and experience in territorial conquest within desert and arid landscapes. The urban centres of Khorasan and Central Asia within the Islamic realm will form part of my subject. The Vikings’ principal skill lay in incursions via waterways, and they operated primarily using naval forces. Both groups will be studied outside their territorial cores, in the steppes, and in zones of interaction they will be considered as agents of crisis. In other words, in my research the primary power centres in Baghdad and the population centres and cities of the Vikings constitute a secondary subject of study. The incursions of these two groups, as sources and agents of crisis, will be investigated. The systemic changes they create, or that arise under the influence of their presence, will be examined.