(2013) Some thoughts on the mode of culture change in the fourth-millennium BC Iranian highlands (original) (raw)
Related papers
New Perspectives from the Proto-Elamite Horizon in the Center of the Iranian Plateau
The International Journal of Humanities, 2017
Archaeologists define the Proto-Elamite phenomenon by the appearance of ProtoElamite writing, the first form of local writing in Iran on tablets in many cases together with specific types of other management tools and pottery, over a vast geographical territory across the Iranian plateau. Different explanations have been offered to account for this spread and the shift from a Mesopotamian-oriented culture during the earlier period (Late Uruk) to a predominantly Iranian-oriented culture during the late fourth and early third millennium BCE. However, up to now, most of these explanations have been concentrated on the recovered material culture from Fars in the southern part of the plateau and Khuzestan in the southwest. New discoveries from sites on the northern fringes of the plateau depict a fresh and more complete picture of this enigmatic phenomenon. The new excavations and surveys conducted in the settlements that contain the material culture of this horizon have significantly ad...
Archéo-Nil, 2016
In the Near East, the most ancient writing systems currently known in the world appeared at the end of the 4th millennium BC: the proto-cuneiform writing in Southern Mesopotamia and the proto-elamite writing on the Iranian Plateau. Both used for administrative and accounting purposes, these writing systems displayed important parallels, such as the numerical systems and the numerical value signs, and dissimilarities since most of their signs differed from each other. Because of the apparent break in the scribal tradition on the Iranian Plateau around 2800 BC, the proto-elamite writing did not give birth to any offspring which could have helped us in its decipherment, contrary to the proto-cuneiform writing and its heir, the cuneiform writing. For this reason, although it is known for more than one century thanks to the French excavations in Susa, the protoelamite writing remains still largely undeciphered and only the shared elements with the proto-cuneiform writing (such as the numerical systems) are finally well understood. In the mind of the non-specialists, the Near East is usually reduced to (Southern) Mesopotamia. In order to render all the complexity of the historical context which witnessed the invention of writing in the Near East, this paper presents state of the art research on the Iranian Plateau and the important scientific corpus of the proto-elamite tablets.
A New Edition of the Proto-Elamite Text MDP 17, 112
MDP 17, 112, like most proto-Elamite tablets, was first published in the early part of the twentieth century when understanding of both the writing system and the society that produced it were still relatively poor. Recent advances in the study of early Iran and the proto-Elamite writing system in particular have prompted a re-evaluation of this text and its relevance to our understanding of the wider corpus.
The proto-Elamite tablets from Tepe Sofalin
2013
Twelve proto-Elamite tablets and fragments were found during the 2006-07 excavation at Tape Sofalin in the northern Central Iranian Plateau. The form and content of these tablets is entirely consistent with that of the standard and late proto-Elamite tablets from Susa, except TSF 11, which we date to the Susa II/GodinV Period. Although all of the inscribed objects from Tape Sofalin published here are very fragmentary, they document the existence of a developed administration system.
The societies of the northern and southern zones of the "Iranian Central Plateau" flourished during the last quarter of fourth millennium BCE. This floruit was marked by the rise of complex social systems, long distance trade, and new systems for the management of economic activities, such as the "proto-Elamite writing system" (Vidale 2018; Helwing 2019; Fazeli Nashli and Nokandeh 2019). This evidence supports the view that the inhabitants of the Iranian Plateau during this time were connected to each other, represented by a relatively uniform writing system and similar economic organization. However, nowadays we know that the similarity of the "Grey Ware Culture" occurring in Proto-Elamite sites of the northcentral Plateau such as Sofalin, Qoli Darvish, Meymanatabad and Sialk also suggests interregional contact, beyond the "Proto-Elamite phenomenon" during the last quarter of fourth millennium BCE. The population of the whole of the north Central Plateau appears to have dispersed during the third millennium BCE and current information suggests that most Chalcolithic settlements were gradually abandoned beginning around 3400 BCE, and that the hiatus in settled occupation continued throughout the third millennium BCE. This may be connected with climatic events during the last quarter of the fourth millennium BCE, characterized by aridity and increased aeolian activity, which destabilized the agriculture system. As Vidale postulated (Vidale et al. 2018) the social evolution of the Central Plateau, based on non-centralized networks during the Chalcolithic period and were extinguished shortly after 3000 BC but shaped again shortly which was different from the previous period. This paper will summarize the findings of these excavations and propose a chronological framework for these social and cultural changes from the late fourth to the early 1 st millennia BCE. In this paper we document the intra-regional societal developments and interregional material culture connections that made the third and second millennia BCE such a dynamic time.