By conceiving two emergent nation-states as a single region linked by conjoining roads, shared technologies and circulating researchers, this essay traces the emergence of a common “intellectual infrastructure” that during the interwar decades enabled European, American, Iranian, Afghan and Indian scholars to promote archeological and architectural interpretations of the Iranian and Afghan past. Taking Robert Byron’s Road to Oxiana as a fixed point of reference, the following pages survey the motor-linked sites where these new disciplinary approaches were developed and disseminated. By positioning Byron amid a larger cadre of investigators publishing in Farsi, Dari and Urdu no less than English, French and German, the essay shows how shifts in Iranian perceptions of the ancient and medieval past were part of a larger regional development, unfolding not only in familiar dialogue with Europe, but also in conversation and to some degree competition with nationalist scholarship in Afghanistan and India. Together with the journals, museums, learned societies and congresses which were launched in the 1920s and 1930s, cars and cameras—those key tools of the “age of speed”—were central to these learned ventures. Far from generating uniformity, this shared intellectual infrastructure enabled multiple interpretations of the archaeological and architectural past that were nonetheless mutually intelligible and methodologically consistent.

中文翻译：

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速度时代的新历史：两次世界大战期间阿富汗和伊朗的考古-建筑历史

通过将两个新兴的民族国家视为一个由道路、共享技术和流通研究人员连接起来的单一区域，本文追溯了在两次世界大战期间欧洲、美国、伊朗、阿富汗和印度学者得以实现的共同“知识基础设施”的出现促进对伊朗和阿富汗过去的考古和建筑解释。以罗伯特拜伦的通往奥克尼亚纳之路作为一个固定的参考点，以下几页调查了开发和传播这些新学科方法的与汽车相关的网站。通过将拜伦定位在以波斯语、达里语和乌尔都语出版的不亚于英语、法语和德语的大量调查人员中，这篇文章展示了伊朗对古代和中世纪过去的看法的转变是如何成为更大区域发展的一部分，不仅表现在与欧洲进行熟悉的对话，但也与阿富汗和印度的民族主义学者进行对话并在某种程度上竞争。连同在 1920 年代和 1930 年代发起的期刊、博物馆、学术团体和大会，汽车和照相机——这些“速度时代”的关键工具——是这些学术冒险的核心。远没有产生均匀性，