ABSTRACT
Looking backwards in time from December 1961, there is first of all, in round figures, a period of 120 years for which the most important historical sources consist of written documents more or less contemporary with the events which they describe. Moving back again, behind the somewhat notional period from about 1500 to about 1840, we come to the period for which archaeology moves into the dominant position among the sources of historical evidence. Contemporary written records by eye-witnesses are strictly speaking, reduced to three—that of the unknown author of the Periplus towards the end of the first century, that of Masudi in the tenth, and that of Ibn Battuta in the fourteenth. In view of the paramount importance of archaeological evidence for the medieval period, it is impossible to overstress the importance of finding, mapping and sampling the traditionally dateable sites of the period.
