Introduction
Since our last report, on the excavations of 1937,1 the Iranian expedition, consisting as usual of Joseph M. Upton and the authors, has spent two seasons working in Nishapir, the first from July until December 1938 and the second from July 1939 until August 1940. In our second campaign the excava-tions had got well under way and were yielding such a rich haul of objects and in-formation that, when the war started in Europe, we decided to remain at work as long as our funds could be made to last, provided that the Far East route home re-mained open and there seemed a reasonably good chance of shipping back our share of the finds and of bringing away our notes, drawings, and photographs
As we saw little possibility of returning to Iran for further work as long as the war lasted, we attempted to arrange our pro-gram in such a way that, when we did leave, there would be few loose ends to the work: all the material in our storerooms noted and photographed as far as possible, and all our excavations carefully planned and photo-graphed as far as they went. The latter was particularly important if we were to be kept away from the site for a long time. The frost and snows of the winters and the heavy spring rains play havoc with mud walls, and besides that the local peasants, who are even more inquisitive and acquisi-tive than we ourselves are, often destroy in a few hours important evidence that has been laboriously uncovered. A little earth is so easily taken away from a mound to lighten the soil of an adjoining field, anda few old baked bricks from a Samanid facade cost nothing but the labor of pulling them loose and offer a tempting opportunity for repairing a wall or enlarging a house