Historical archaeology and heritage in the Middle East

Landlord villages dominated Iranian land tenure for hundreds of years, whereby one powerful landlord owned the village structures, surrounding farmland, and to all intents and purposes, the village occupants themselves, a system that in some cases remained in place up to the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

In Oman, mud-brick oases were home to most of the rural population right up until Sultan Qaboos came to power in 1970, and required inhabitants of mud-brick houses to relocate into new concrete block buildings.

This title explores these everyday, rural communities in Iran and Oman in the 19th and 20th centuries, through a combination of building analysis, excavation, artefact analysis and ethnographic interviews.