In 1934, anthropologist Henry Field (1902–1986) headed an expedition to the Tigris-Euphrates region of Iraq to carry out an anthropometric survey of the Marsh Arabs, the mi’dan tribes. Field’s team photographed the tribes in their setting, thus recording not only the physical characteristics of the people and the region, but also their cultural characteristics. The photographs, known as the Field Collection, are now on exhibit in Harvard’s Peabody Museum. On January 6, in a lecture organized by the Faculty of Health Sciences (FHS), Omar Dewachi, the curator of that collection, gave the AUB community the opportunity to see some of those photographs. Dewachi, who is currently a visiting lecturer at FHS and a PhD candidate in social anthropology at Harvard University, “tried to recreate a multi-layered narrative of Field’s expedition to the Marsh Arab lands” by displaying some of the most expressive and communicative photographs of the collection and outlining the anthropological conclusions that could be drawn from those photos. The location and landscape of the Marsh Arab dwellings, the traditional dress codes, the means of transport, types of harvest, and the social customs were shown, accompanied by relevant narratives derived from Henry Field’s memoirs and publications. According to Dewachi, the Marsh Arabs, who had been “plagued with public health problems…, and whose attempt at revolt was crushed in 1992 by Saddam Hussein, who in return diverted the flow of the rivers from their area, thus causing drought in their region,” are now witnessing the restoration of infrastructure. However, Dewachi said, “the future of the Marsh Arabs is still unknown.”
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