Bibliographia Iranica

A predominantly bibliographic blog for Iranian Studies

Tag: Archaeology

  • The New Chronology of the Bronze Age Settlement of Tepe Hissar, Iran

    Gursan-Salzmann, Ayş. 2016.  The New Chronology of the Bronze Age Settlement of Tepe Hissar, Iran. Philadelphia. University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology .

    Tepe Hissar is a large Bronze Age site in northeastern Iran notable for its uninterrupted occupational history from the fifth to the second millennium B.C.E. The quantity and elaborateness of its excavated artifacts and funerary customs position the site prominently as a cultural bridge between Mesopotamia and Central Asia. To address questions of synchronic and diachronic nature relating to the changing levels of socioeconomic complexity in the region and across the greater Near East, chronological clarity is required. While Erich Schmidt’s 1931-32 excavations for the Penn Museum established the historical framework at Tepe Hissar, it was Robert H. Dyson, Jr., and his team’s follow-up work in 1976 that presented a stratigraphically clearer sequence for the site with associated radiocarbon dates. Until now, however, a full study of the site’s ceramic assemblages has not been published.

    This monograph brings to final publication a stratigraphically based chronology for the Early Bronze Age settlement at Tepe Hissar. Based on a full study of the ceramic assemblages excavated from radiocarbon-dated occupational phases in 1976 by Dyson and his team, and linked to Schmidt’s earlier ceramic sequence that was derived from a large corpus of grave contents, a new chronological framework for Tepe Hissar and its region is established. This clarified sequence provides ample evidence for the nature of the evolution and the abandonment of the site, and its chronological correlations on the northern Iranian plateau, situating it in time and space between Turkmenistan and Bactria on the one hand and Mesopotamia on the other.

    Ayşe Gürsan-Salzmann, a graduate of Robert College (Istanbul) and Ball State University, earned her M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania. She is Senior Consulting Scholar in the Mediterranean Section of the Penn Museum and the Deputy Director of the Gordion Archaeological Project.

    Table of Contents

  • Late Sasanid and Early Islamic Period in the Marvdasht Plain

    Shobairi, Abazar, 2016. New evidence of late Sasanid and early Islamic period in the Marvdasht plain. In Denis Genequand (ed.), Proceedings of the 9th International Congress on the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East, vol.2, 425–440. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag.

    This present paper is a brief report of a rescue excavation results as well as an analysis of the relative chronology of the material culture which was found during the excavation on the Marvdasht Plain. The result of the excavation can serve as an indication of the sequence of settlement from the Sasanid to the late Islamic period in the Marvdasht Plain and southwestern Iran generally.

  • An unusual Khotanese terracotta head from the Sherabad oasis

    Stančo, Ladislav. 2015. An unusual Khotanese terracotta head from the Sherabad oasis. Studia Hercynia XIX(1). 218–226.

    This paper deals with a newly found terracotta head from the Sherabad District, southern Uzbekistan. Its probable origin in the eastern Turkestan region of Khotan as well as its iconographic peculiarities and their interpretation is discussed.

  • Ancient Persia and the Archaeology of Empires

    Khatchadourian, Lori. 2016. Imperial Matter: Ancient Persia and the Archaeology of Empires. Oakland: University of California Press.

    What is the role of the material world in shaping the tensions and paradoxes of imperial sovereignty? Scholars have long shed light on the complex processes of conquest, extraction, and colonialism under imperial rule. But imperialism has usually been cast as an exclusively human drama, one in which the world of matter does not play an active role. Lori Khatchadourian argues instead that things—from everyday objects to monumental buildings—profoundly shape social and political life under empire. Out of the archaeology of ancient Persia and the South Caucasus, Imperial Matter advances powerful new analytical approaches to the study of imperialism writ large and should be read by scholars working on empire across the humanities and social sciences.

    A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos.

    About the Autor                                                                                                          LORI KHATCHADOURIAN is Assistant Professor of Archaeology in the Department of Near Eastern Studies at Cornell University.

  • Painted plaster and glazed brick fragments from Pasargadae and Persepolis

    Aloiz, Emily, Janet G. Douglas & Alexander Nagel. 2016. Painted plaster and glazed brick fragments from Achaemenid Pasargadae and Persepolis, Iran. Heritage Science (4) 3.

    A PDF file of the paper is available online. (more…)

  • Ancient Near Eastern Art

    This slightly older publication has just come to my attention:

    Kawami, Trudy & John Olbrantz (eds.). 2013. Source: Breath of heaven, breath of earth. Distributed by University of Washington Press for Hallie Ford Museum.

    Breath of Heaven, Breath of Earth: Ancient Near Eastern Art from American Collections encompasses the geographic regions of Mesopotamia, Syria and the Levant, and Anatolia and Iran, and explores several broad themes found in the art of the ancient Near East: gods and goddesses, men and women, and both real and supernatural animals. These art objects reveal a wealth of information about the people and cultures that produced them: their mythology, religious beliefs, concept of kingship, social structure, and daily life.

    About the authors:

    Trudy Kawami is director of research at the Arthur M. Sackler Foundation in New York.

    John Olbrantz is the Maribeth Collins Director of the Hallie Ford Museum of Art at Willamette University in Salem, Oregon.

  • Mehrgān at Persepolis

    Bahadori, Ali. 2015.  Persepolitan ceremonies: The case of Mehrgān. Ancient West & East 14. 51–71.

    The celebration of the Mehrgān at Persepolis is a hypothesis that has never been discussed in detail. The present paper explores evidence for the presence of the Mithra cult at the Achaemenid court and, consequently, for celebration of the Mehrgān at Persepolis.

  • A Newly Discovered Iron Age Site at Sarrez

    Melirad, Sheler & Abbas Razmpoush. 2015. A newly discovered Iron Age site at Sarrez, Iranian Kurdistan. Ancient Near Eastern Studies 52. 207–216.

    Sarrez is an ancient site in Kurdistan Province, Iran, near the present-day country town of Kamyaran. This site was discovered accidentally during dam construction activities. It has yielded some metal artefacts, potsherds and bones that are comparable to Iron Age III instances. The collection in its entirety is discussed in this article. One of the main objects from Sarrez is a decorated beaker with a scene on its wall that is comparable in many ways to examples of Neo-Assyrian art. The purpose of this paper is to publish and date the metal objects of the Sarrez collection based on this bronze beaker, which is one the few beakers from western Iran which has been found in a secure context.

  • Achaemenid pottery from Dahan-e Gholaman

    Zehbari, Zohreh, Reza Mehr Afarin & Seyyed Rasul Musavi Haji. 2015. Studies on the structural characteristics of Achaemenid pottery from Dahan-e Gholaman. Ancient Near Eastern Studies 52. 217–259.

    The Achaemenid site of Dahan-E Gholaman lies 44 km southeast of Zabol, eastern Iran. Recovered archaeological records and evidence, including residential, public, and administrative-religious structures, indicate pre-planned and intense urbanisation. Unfortunately, the pottery from Dahan-E Gholaman has not been paid the attention it is due, even though pottery from the site has been studied. The studies show that innovation and demands on the pottery industry created local types of beakers, jars, jugs, and bowls and so on. Research on the pottery characteristics shows that the potters of this site were skilled in controlling the kiln temperature and were able to produce high quality wares, while various forms were commonly in use at the site.

  • Sogdian Art and Archaelogy in China

    Wertmann, Patrick. 2015. Sogdians in China. Archaeological and art historical analyses of tombs and texts from the 3rd to the 10th century AD. Deutschen Archäologischen Institut, Eurasien-Abteilung, Außenstelle Peking. (Archaeology in China and East Asia 5). Philipp von Zabern.

    Sogdians, originating from present-day Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, dominated one of history’s greatest trade empires, extending from Constantinople to Korea between the 6th and 8th centuries AD. They established settlements in China and were granted positions of the highest rank at the imperial court. In recent years, richly equipped tombs attributed to members of the Sogdian diaspora were discovered in north and west China. The burial objects and inscriptions in these tombs offer surprising insights into the lives of these Central Asians. Patrick Wertmann followed the routes of the Sogdian traders and documented for his dissertation their traces in 54 museums and collections in eight countries, particularly in China. This fifth volume of the series Archaeology in China and East Asia offers the most comprehensive overview of Sogdian artefacts thus far assembled, with numerous colour photographs by the author.

    The book has 347 pages with 116 full-page plates and 15 tables.

     About the Author:
    Patrick Wertmann (PhD 2013) .is a specialist in East Asian art history and now working in the Sino-German cooperation project “Silk Road Fashion” of the Beijing Branch Office, Eurasia Department, German Archaeological Institute.