Text as Cultural Material: Recognition of Cultural and Social Conditions of the Constitutional Period Based on Molla Nasreddin Cartoons Weekly Magazine

Subject Areas : Prehistoric Archaeology

Vahid Shahsavarani ¹ , Mohammad Mortezaei ²

1 - M.A. in Archaeology, Department of Archaeology, Islamic Azad University, Central Tehran Branch, Tehran, Iran.
2 - Associate professor, Research Institute of Cultural Heritage and Tourism, Tehran, Iran.

Received: 2023-04-30 Accepted : 2023-04-30 Published : 2016-02-20

Keywords:

Abstract :

The historical texts are important for archaeologists in some aspects. First, the written texts and the second the study of them in an archaeological context besides other materials close to it. In fact, the importance of context lies in cultural material (here text) being evaluated in a social and historical basis. The historical texts are considered as a form of material instance and other facts that are of importance for archaeologists. The present paper goal is to recognize Cultural/ social behavior of constitutional period in this way. In this paper, the main discussion is on Molla Nasraddin weekly magazine that is studied besides other materials of political/social context of the period (the photographs of this historical context). Among the other magazines, newspapers and journals of that time, Molla Nasraddin weekly magazine, started in 1906 in Tbilisi, has looked into cultural, social and religious situation of that time with irony within its caricatures. In this paper, from the first 100 issues, 50 issues are chosen interlaced with a context approach and recognizing the text as a material to study the cultural and social features of constitutional period, and finally also with the preparation of statistical data derived from the cartoons of the weekly, we have done a sociocultural review of constitutional period.