The Kurdish woman's life
Field Research In A Muslim Society, Iraq
Henny Harald Hansen
Nationalmuseet - København
In the spring and summer of 1957 the Danish Dokan Expedition was working under Professors Harald Ingholt and Jørgen Læssøe on the Rania plain west of Lesser Zab, a tributary of the Tigris in Iraqi Kurdistan. The Expedition concentrated on the excavation of the mound Tell Shemshāra1. Before the expedition left Denmark it offered to take with it a cultural anthropologist from the Ethnographical Department of the National Museum, who, based on the excavation camp on the right bank of the Lesser Zab, would have an opportunity to investigate Kurdish villages in the vicinity. The assistance of the Carlsberg Foundation enabled my association with the Danish Dokan Expedition.
Being a woman anthropologist, I was given, in addition to general investigations of Kurdish ethnography, the special task of studying woman's cultural pattern, which in Muslim areas is difficult for male investigators to undertake.
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