Bibliographia Iranica

A predominantly bibliographic blog for Iranian Studies

Tag: Archaeology

  • The archaeology of Elam

    Potts, D. T., 2015. The archaeology of Elam: Formation and transformation of an ancient Iranian state. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Second edition.

    Elam was an important state in southwestern Iran from the third millennium BC to the appearance of the Persian Empire and beyond. Less well-known than its neighbors in Mesopotamia, Anatolia, the Levant or Egypt, it was nonetheless a region of extraordinary cultural vitality. This book examines the formation and transformation of Elam’s many identities through both archaeological and written evidence, and brings to life one of the most important regions of Western Asia, re-evaluates its significance, and places it in the context of the most recent archaeological and historical scholarship. The new edition includes material from over 800 additional sources, reflecting the enormous amount of fieldwork and scholarship on Iran since 1999. Every chapter contains new insights and material that have been seamlessly integrated into the text in order to give the reader an up-to-date understanding of ancient Elam.

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  • Perspectives on Pasargadae

    Mozaffari, Ali (ed). 2014. World heritage in Iran: Perspectives on Pasargadae. Heritage, Culture and Identity. Farnham, Surrey, UK: Ashgate.

    Pasargadae is the location of the tomb of Cyrus the Great, founder of the Achaemenid Empire. Through the ages it was Islamised and the tomb was ascribed to the Mother of Solomon. It was only at the beginning of the twentieth century that archaeological evidence demonstrated the relationship between the site and Cyrus and it was appropriated into conflicting political discourses on nationalism and Islamism while concurrently acknowledged as a national and then a World Heritages site. However, Pasargadae is neither an isolated World Heritage site, nor purely a symbol of abstract state politics. Pasargadae and its immediate vicinity constitute a living landscape occupied by villagers, nomads and tourists.This edited volume presents for the first time a broad, multi-disciplinary examination of Pasargadae by experts from both outside and within Iran. It specifically focuses on those disciplines that are absent from existing studies, such as ethnography, tourism and museum studies providing valuable insights into this fascinating place. In its totality, the book argues that to understand World Heritage sites and their problems fully, a holistic approach should be adopted, which considers the manifold of perspectives and issues. It also puts forward a novel approach to the question of heritage, representation and construction of collective identity from the framework of place.

     Table of Contents:

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  • The comprehensive history of Iran

    Mousavi-Bojnourdi, Kazem (General Editor). 2015. The comprehensive history of Iran. 20. Vols. Tehran: The Centre for the Great Islamic Encyclopaedia.

    The Comprehensive History of Iran, a multi-volume survey of Iranian history in Persian language is published by The Centre for the Great Islamic Encyclopaedia (CGIE). The twenty volumes cover the history and historical geography, politic, culture and arts of the greater Iran, including all territories inhabited by or staying under the cultural influence of peoples of Iranian descent , from prehistoric times up to the Qajar dynasty. Many aspects of the religious, philosophical, economic, scientific, and artistic elements in Iranian civilization are studied in this series.

    For more information, see the official website and the list of the contributors and the detailed Table of Contents (all in Persian).

    The series consists of 20 volumes: (more…)

  • Architecture et représentations dans l’Iran sassanide

    Callieri, Pierfrancesco. 2014. Architecture et représentations dans l’Iran sassanide (Cahiers de Studia Iranica 50). Peeters.

    This volume contains the text of the five “Ehsan and Latifeh Yarshater Distinguished Lectures on Iranian Studies”, organized by the Unité Mixte de Recherche 7528 “Mondes iranien et indien”, and delivered in 2014 at the College de France in Paris. The aim of this book is to take stock of the architectural and figurative culture of Sasanian Iran on the basis of a new comprehensive evaluation of the varied range of architectural and artistic evidence known to us, and in the light of the recent discoveries published in Iran over the last few years. Without any pretence of being exhaustive, the idea is to bring more light to bear on the utilisation of built-up areas, forms of expression and visual communication, and the mechanisms involved in artisanal production. Two chapters are dedicated to the architecture, a field in which we are far from having arrived at a general consensus, while another chapter deals with a category of artistic production closely linked to the architecture, namely stucco work. The other two chapters look into the technical-stylistic aspects of types of production so far studied mainly from the iconographic point of view: the rock reliefs and the seals.

  • Greater Khorasan

    Rante, Rocco (ed.). 2015. Greater Khorasan: History, Geography, Archaeology and Material Culture (Studies in the History and Culture of the Middle East 29). Walter de Gruyter.

    The modern sense of “Greater Khorasan” today corresponds to a territory which not only comprises the region in the east of Iran but also, beyond Iranian frontiers, a part of Afghanistan and Turkmenistan. In the past this entity was simply defined as Khorasan. In the Sassanid era Khorasan defined the “Eastern lands”. In the Islamic era this term was again taken up in the same sense it previously enjoyed. The Arab sources of the first centuries all mention the eastern regions under the same toponym, Khorasan. Khorasan was the gateway used by Alexander the Great to go into Bactria and India and, inversely, that through which the Seljuks and Mongols entered Iran. In a diachronic context Khorasan was a transit zone, a passage, a crossroads, which, above all in the medieval period, saw the creation of different commercial routes leading to the north, towards India, to the west and into China. In this framework, archaeological researches will be the guiding principle which will help us to take stock of a material culture which, as its history, is very diversified. They also offer valuable elements on commercial links between the principal towns of Khorasan. This book will provide the opportunity to better know the most recent elements of the principal constitutive sites of this geographical and political entity.

  • Tomb of two Elamite princesses

    tomb-Elamite-princeseesShishegar, Arman. 2015. Tomb of the two Elamite princesses: Of the house of King Shutur-Nahunte son of Indada. Neo-Elamite period, phase IIIB (ca. 585–539 B.C.). Tehran: Pažuhešgāh-e Sāzmān-e Mirās̱-e Farhangi.

    This book, published in Persian, is an archaeological report of a tomb excavated in the village of Jubaji,  south-east of Ramhormoz, on the eastern boundary of the province of Khuzestan, south-western Iran. In April 2007, during the digging of a water channel by Khuzestan Water and Power Authority, a subterranean Tombstone was discovered but unfortunately was almost entirely ruined. Later, an excavation team directed by Arman Shishegar was immediately dispatched to the site to carry out rescue excavation. The tomb was completely excavated in three months. The tomb belongs to two Elamite Princesses from the house of a Neo-Elamite king: Shutur-Nahunte son of Indada.

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  • Parthians in the Roman Empire

    Gregoratti, Leonardo. 2015. In the land West of the Euphrates: The Parthians in the Roman Empire. In Pietro Maria Militello & Hakan Öniz (eds.), Proceedings of the 15th symposium on Mediterranean archaeology, held at the University of Catania 3–5 March 2011, vol. II (British Archaeological Reports International Series 2695), 731–735. Oxford: Archaeopress.

  • Early equids at Susa

    Potts, Daniel. 2014. On some early equids at Susa. In B. Cerasetti (ed.), ‘My life is like the summer rose’ Maurizio Tosi e l’Archeologia come modo di vivere. Papers in honour of Maurizio Tosi for his 70th birthday (BAR International Series 2690), 643–647. Oxford: Archaeopress.

    Read the article here.

  • Elamite monumentality and architectural scale

    Potts, Daniel. 2014. Elamite monumentality and architectural scale: Lessons from Susa and Choga Zanbil. In J.F. Osborne (ed.), Approaching monumentality in archaeology, 23–38. Albany: State Univ. of New York Press.

    Read the article here.

  • Extraction and control

    Michael Kozuh, Wouter F. M. Henkelman, Charles E. Jones & Christopher Woods (eds.). 2014. Extraction & control: Studies in honor of Matthew W. Stolper (Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization 68). Chicago: The Oriental Institute.

    Matthew Wolfgang Stolper began working for the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary in 1978 and became full professor in the Oriental Institute 1987, focusing on Neo-Babylonian and Middle Elamite. Matt has worked tirelessly to raise the necessary funding, to assemble a team of scholars, to promote the importance of the Persepolis Fortification Archive to academic and popular audiences, and most significantly, to concisely, passionately, and convincingly place the Persepolis Archives in their Achaemenid, ancient Near Eastern, and modern geo-political contexts. The twenty-six papers from Stolper’s colleagues, friends, and students show the breadth of his interests.

    Download the book here.