This Festschrift, featuring twenty contributions from international colleagues and companions, comprises three topics that have significantly determined Ute Franke‘s career: “Archaeological Fieldwork and Syntheses”, “The World of Museums” and “History and History of Art”. They present analyses of archaeological field projects in different geographical regions, discuss questions of cultural preservation, museums’ objects, provenance issues as well as modern forms of museum access, and give personal impressions of individual regions. This broad range of themes reflects the diverse research interests of the honoree, whose expertise lies not only in archaeological field research in Pakistan and Afghanistan, but also in the museum sector, where Franke has curated various important exhibitions on the Near and Middle East at the Museum of Islamic Art (Berlin).
Many contributions highlight the significance of the Middle East for the humanities – an important aspect that often threatens to be forgotten in light of the present political situation, which currently limits access to this region for archaeological research.