The Kevorkian Lectures
The Hagop Kevorkian Visiting Lectureship in Iranian Art and Archaeology was established by the Trustees of the Kevorkian Foundation to enable the University Museum twice a year to bring an outstanding scholar to Philadelphia to give a public lecture and to participate for ten days in discussions with curators and students in that phase of Iranian Art and Archaeology in which he has a special competence. The Kevorkian lecturers this year were Dr. Maurits van Loon who spoke on November 10 on Iran and Anatolia at the Dawn of History, and Mr. Henrik Thrane whose lecture on May 1 was entitled Protohistoric Luristan, Problems and Facts in the Light of Recent Fieldwork in Western Luristan.
Dr. van Loon is Assistant Professor of the University of Chicago and Research Associate of the Oriental Institute there. He obtained his Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1964 where he did his dissertation on Urartian Art. Prior to undertaking studies at Columbia he served in the Nederlands Foreign Service from 1951 to 1958. He excavated with R. H. Dyson, Jr. at Hasanlu in Iran in 1960 and 1962 and with Seton Lloyd at Kayalidere in eastern Turkey (ancient Urartu) in 1964. In 1964 he also conducted a survey in the Euphrates dam basin in Syria, followed in 1965 by excavations in the pre-pottery neolithic site of Mureybit and in 1967 at the Bronze Age site of Selenkahiye. Dr. van Loon discussed various points of contact between the art and archaeology of Urartu and Iran.
Mr. Thrane was born in Copenhagen in 1934 and studied prehistory at the Universities of Copenhagen and Cambridge, where he received his Magister Artium in 1960. In addition to participation in excavations in Scandinavia, he joined in the excavation of neolithic Knossos in 1957-58 conducted by the British School at Athens. He was prehistorian on the Danish Phoenicia Expedition 1958-60. In the latter year he also took part in the British Academy excavations at Yarim Tepe in eastern Iran under the direction of Mr. David Stronach. In 1963, Mr. Thrane worked with the Danish Expedition to Luristan on the site of Tepe Guran, and in 1964 was Field Director of the same expedition. After holding a research lectureship at the University of Copenhagen, he joined the National Museum of Denmark as an Assistant Keeper in 1965. His lecture provided an outline of stratigraphic details of the Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages in western Luristan and demonstrated how little fact and how many problems still surround the subject.