Lecture in memory of Professor David Stronach

The UNESCO world heritage site of Persepolis in Iran became a globally famous, imperial ruin in the seventeenth century; foreign visitors took pieces of its architectural sculpture from the eighteenth century onwards, first as gifts, later as merchandise. This webinar follows the paths of these pieces as they expanded the physical boundaries of the Achaemenid capital, becoming contact relics for their homeland on distant shores. This webinar re-contextualises the dispersed, stone emigres, including

San Francisco’s, in their original fifth-century BC structures. It considers how their fragmentation transformed the resonance of the sculptures in isolation, but also affected the twentieth-century conservation and study of their home.

Encomium delivered by Prof. emer. Dr. Michael Roaf, Institut für Vorderasiatische Archäologie, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München