Photo 392/51

Collection of 95 original nitrate film negatives relating to Stein's archaeological investigations in Northern Iraq, March-July 1938. This expedition's main purpose was to make an aerial survey of the Roman archaeological sites of the area; the majority of the aerial views are not in the British Library and are held in the collections of the Institute of Archaeology, London, the British Museum and the Bodleian Library. This series comprises the ground photographs of sites taken by Stein. Stein's own account was not published in his lifetime, but an edited version was compiled from his manuscripts and typescripts in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, in Shelagh Gregory and David Kennedy, Sir Aurel Stein's Limes Report (2 vols, B.A.R. International Series 272 (i-ii), Oxford, 1985). This work includes the surviving aerial photographs as well as a selection of the ground views from this collection. Only a small selection of modern prints have been made from this series: these were produced for inclusion in Gregory and Kennedy. See Gregory and Kennedy, pp. 372-5, for an account of the fate of the aerial photographs. See also Photo 392/40-41, which also documents this expedition.

Illustrations reproduced from this series in Gregory and Kennedy , and for which modern prints have been made, are as follows (BL reference followed by Gregory and Kennedy plate number): 392/51(1) = 28b; 392/51(15) = 3c; 392/51(17) = 3b; 392/51(8) = 2b; 392/51(19) = 2d; 392/51(24) = 2a; 392/51(33) = 8a; 392/51(35) = 8b; 392/51(37) = 18b; 392/51(40) = 2c; 392/51(68) = 31b; 392/51(77) = 20b; 392/51(81) = 20c; 392/51(84) = 28a