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Welcome
to the official web site of Dr Peter Alford Andrews |
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Aims My research began
in 1966 from Arthur Upham Pope’s remark that no one
Drawing I - Lak, Javanmard, Khurramabad, West Iran
Now, forty years on, I have made complete surveys of nomad tents
in Morocco, Turkey, Iran, and Qatar, and done fieldwork in Mongolia and
Qirgizstan, all with the help of my wife. We have also studied almost
all the tents available in museum collections in Europe and Russia,
besides adding some more A simple criterion has governed this fieldwork: that my data should be accurate enough for anyone to be able to reconstruct the tents I studied. The means are measured drawings and sketches, photographs, tape recordings, specimens of materials, and field notes. The data range from the methods of spinning yarn to the layout and movement of camps. Drawing III - Firuzkuhi of Afghanistan Now it is plain that my starting point, the belief that nomad cultures would be affected drastically by changes in society, was correct, and although the traditions have not all disappeared, very many have been so weakened that much of what we recorded can no longer be found. We are glad we began when we did, and that we interviewed old people who gave details the younger generation no longer know. January 2006
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had ever
considered tents seriously as architecture. I started, as an architect,
with the simple but ambitious aim of making a survey of nomad tents
throughout the Muslim world. It rapidly became obvious that if I were to
understand the ethnological context, tribal history, technology and
terminology in comparison, an architect’s training was insufficient.
I had to set about acquiring an orientalist’s training, and an
ethnographer’s, if not an ethnologist’s, skills. Fortunately, since
that remark of Pope’s in 1938, a number of important, fundamental
studies had been published, which established often admirable criteria
for future work, and raised many of the questions the work should seek
to answer.
specimens. Meanwhile I have been able to gather
almost everything worthwhile that has been published in any language on
countries I have or have not visited, and have been fortunate in drawing
on the expertise of colleagues to fill out my own knowledge. With this
material, and the languages I have learned as tools of my trade, I have
been able to start publishing the comparative work that I had in mind
when I started.
