The Art of Elam CA. 4200–525 BC

Javier Álvarez-Mon

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780415814744
• eBook ISBN: 9781000034851
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Teaching Arts & Humanities

The Art of Elam ca. 4200-525 BC offers a view of, and a critical reflection on, the art history of one of the world's first and least-known civilizations, illuminating a significant chapter of our human past.

Not unlike a gallery of historical paintings, this comprehensive treatment of the rich heritage of ancient Iran showcases a visual trail of the evolution of human society, with all its leaps and turns, from its origins in the earliest villages of southwest Iran at around 4200 BC to the rise of the Achaemenid Persian empire in ca. 525 BC. Richly illustrated in full colour with 1450 photographs, 190 line drawings, and digital reconstructions of hundreds of artefacts—some of which have never before been published—The Art of Elam goes beyond formal and thematic boundaries to emphasize the religious, political, and social contexts in which art was created and functioned.

Such a magisterial study of Elamite art has never been written making The Art of Elam ca. 4200-525 BC a ground-breaking publication essential to all students of ancient art and to our current understanding of the civilizations of the ancient Near East.

PART I

Elam before Elam (CA. 4200–2900 BC)

Our story commences around 6,000 years ago when small farming communities across the Middle East were spearheading a revolution in the ways that humans lived and interacted with their environments. The human genius for adaptability and cooperation started to take form in the small settlements and increasingly complex social structures in which we can discern the seeds of today’s global village. Farming and animal domestication did not put end to hunting and seasonal gathering, but house and village—tangible products of human agency—transformed the physical environment and carved new conceptual and experiential categories that redefined notions of individual and communal identities.

The peoples inhabiting the villages of southwest Iran (associated with the Ubaid culture of ca. 6500–3800 BC) were part of this avant-garde movement, and by around 4200 BC when the first settlers arrived at Susa we find them engaged in the manufacture of monumental architecture, extraordinary fine, decorated pottery, and glyptic with enigmatic ritual imagery; all together showcasing a prestige apparatus that helped to define and maintain a multi-faceted social organization. By around 3800 BC the settlement was attracting new migrants and doubled in size. Perhaps as a direct result of the revolutionary socio-economic changes emanating from the major Sumerian urban center of Uruk, often referred to in terms of an “Uruk Phenomenon”, old pottery and glyptic technology and styles were abandoned. An increase in wealth and in the size and density of settlements in southern Mesopotamia and southwest Iran triggered a “big-bang” in social interaction, which fostered the emergence of the first cities and an information revolution culminating in the invention of writing at around 3200 BC. In Susiana, this revolution came accompanied by an outburst of glyptic imagery exhibiting a dynamic “working class” consumed by the manufacture, processing, management and storage of goods. Behind these activities lay an increased rationalization and control of wealth by elites and religious institutions.

The collapse of the socio-political organization that had orchestrated this elaborate economic system sometime around 3100 BC reverberated through the ancient Near East. Perhaps as a direct result, a cultural (and probably political) entity came to assert itself from Susa through the Iranian highlands and plateau. We can discern this entity in the form of a new written language, today known as “Proto-Elamite”, and an artistic production of unmatched originality.

1

THE BIRTH OF SUSA (CA. 4200–3800 BC)

On the flat alluvial plain of southwestern Iran, a natural hill next to the ancient course of the Karkheh river became home to a small group of people at around 4200 BC, marking the commencement of the Susa I (or Susa A) period [Pl. 1].¹ The village was composed of a north and a south district, each elevated on a separate rise [Pls. 2, 3b, c]. The higher northern mound stood 10.5 m above the surrounding plain and extended over 6.3 ha. Its settlement was enclosed by a massive wall measuring ca. 6 m wide at the base.² Later host to the Persian palace of Darius I, this mound is conventionally referred to as “the Apadana mound”. The southern mound, known as the “Acropole” or alumelu “high-rising”, reached about 7 m in elevation and extended over 7 ha. [Pl. 3b, c].³ The alumelu accommodated a rectangular mudbrick platform (see “Funerary” Platform below) associated with domestic structures and a high concentration of burials with assemblages characterized by fine painted wares. The use of this platform was discontinued upon the construction nearby of an enormous, solid, 10 m high terrace supporting communal edifices (see High Terrace below). Numerous potters’ kilns and furnaces distributed along the village boundaries supported the production of large quantities of pottery, baked bricks, decorative tiles and nails, as well as innovative metallurgical activities.

Plate 2City of Susa from the air with principal mounds

Plate 3City of Susa. The tomb of the prophet Daniel and the ruins of Susa

The monumental edifices, fine, painted ceramics, stone seals and sealings, terracotta ophidian and animal figurines, and metal tools and weapons described here (as well as numerous stone tools and sling bullets preserved in the archaeological record) comprise an artistic “package” that reflects the emergence of complexity within the society.

Architecture

“Funerary” Platform (“massif funéraire”) [Pls. 5c, d, e, 6]. Large-scale earth removals near the southwestern edge of the Acropole (the so-called “Grande Tranchée”) uncovered a mound of densely packed burials accompanied by Susa I material assemblages [see Pl. 4]. Initially, the mound was described by Jacques de Morgan as a “necropolis” of piled-up “open burials” in which most bodies had been clearly laid directly on the ground wrapped in cloth (as primary inhumations) with limbs either flexed or extended [Pl. 4c]. Persuaded by the opinion of Jamshedji M. Unvala, a Zoroastrian colleague, Morgan’s successor Roland de Mecquenem instead saw the skeletons as secondary interments associated with complex ritual practices and social structures. While this view has since been largely followed by most commentators, the burials are better seen in light of Morgan’s original description and the general pattern of primary interment in fifth millennium Susiana.⁴

Plate 4Susa I cemetery. Pottery kiln and excavations (ca. 4200–3800 BC)

Plate 5Susa I. High Terrace and “funerary” platform (ca. 4200–3800 BC)

Later work in the same area revealed a monumental mudbrick platform that had been raised on virgin soil by the early inhabitants of Susa.⁵ Remains of walls, paving, cooking utensils and a hearth next to the platform attest to two early phases of domestic occupation. Both layers produced large amounts of ash and wood charcoal pointing to the incorporation of timber in the structures and their destruction by fire.

High Terrace [Pls. 5e, 6]. Approximately 7 m to the north of the funerary platform stood a 2 m high, irregular, cruciform-shaped, sundried-brick platform with 90 m x 82 m sides and central projections on the north and south.⁶ It supported an 8 m ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• LIST OF PLATES
• PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS, TEXT SIGLA, AND OTHER ABBREVIATIONS
• ABOUT THIS BOOK
• THE LAND OF ELAM
• THE ELAMITE COLLECTIONS
• ART HISTORICAL CONSIDERATIONS: Past and present
• CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE
• PART I Elam before Elam (CA. 4200–2900 BC)
• PART II The rise of Elam (CA. 2900–1880 BC)
• PART III The Golden Age (CA. 1880–1050 BC)
• PART IV Between Golden Age and Empire (CA. 1050–525 BC)
• BIBLIOGRAPHY
• INDEX