Danti, M. D. and M. Cifarelli. “Assyrianizing Contexts at Hasanlu Tepe IVb?: Materiality and Identity in Northwest Iran,” Chapter 32 In J. MacGinnis and D. Wicke, eds. The Provincial Archaeology of the Assyrian Empire. (Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research) 2016. (original) (raw)
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Imperial Peripheries in the Neo-Assyrian Period, 2019
A brief look at the history of archaeology in the Ancient Near East can help explain why excavators initially categorized objects found at Hasanlu as either "Local" or "Assyrian/Assyrianizing" and why this notion has persisted in the literature, particularly those studies published between the beginning of the project in 1956 and the publication of East of Assyria in 1989. When the Hasanlu Expedition began its work in the 1950s, perhaps the most important and newsworthy excavation in the Near East was that of Nimrud, begun in 1949 by Sir Max Mallowan and the British School of Archaeology in Iraq. The extraordinary finds at Nimrud, which included hundreds of luxury objects made in Assyria, North Syria, and the Levant, supplemented and clarified the Assyrian archaeological discoveries of the nineteenth century. The Nimrud excavations were detailed in scholarly publications and heralded in the British popular press. 6 The participation of the Metropolitan Museum of Art at Nimrud and its 1955 exhibition of "treasure" obtained by the Met in partage brought a great deal of attention in the United States to the excavations and to Assyria itself. 7 By the time excavations began at Hasanlu in 1956, Assyrian and North Syrian material culture were well-published, extensively researched, and of great interest to scholarly and popular audiences alike. It is not surprising, then, that the excavators of Hasanlu used Assyrian objects as comparanda for their discoveries and Assyrian royal inscriptions when probing the identity of the citizens of Hasanlu. Strongly disposed toward Assyrian material culture, excavators determined that Hasanlu was "full of " Assyrian and Assyrianizing objects and, to a lesser extent, North Syrian objects (Dyson and Muscarella 1989, 3).
Large sculpted circular door sockets are a characteristic feature of Neo-Assyrian monumental architecture and have been found in palaces, temples, and administrative centers both at core imperial sites such as Khorsabad and Nimrud and at provincial capitals such as Till-Barsib, Arslan-Tash, and Ziyaret Tepe. In the case of Iran, although the Assyrians controlled significant parts of the country, especially in the eighth century Bce, research into their presence in that period has until now been very limited. Even so, there is one such door socket known from Iran, namely from the excavations at Tapeh Giyan, the discovery of which helped confirm the existence of an Assyrian administrative center at the site. This in turn led Julian Reade to suggest that Giyan was the location of the capital of the Assyrian province of Kharkhar. We can now add to the debate new discoveries from the site of Quwakh Tapeh in Kuzaran, in the northern Mahidasht plain, where a carved door socket and fragments of other carved stones scattered across the mound attest to the existence of a building of major importance. In this study we present this socket and compare it with other relevant material in order to determine its date, establish its archaeological context, and consider the implications. introduction The presence of the Assyrians in the central Zagros from the ninth to seventh centuries Bce, well known from royal inscriptions and other texts, has been increasingly corroborated by archaeological finds in Iran. A number of monuments commissioned by the Neo-Assyrian kings have been discovered over the past decades. In particular, the rock reliefs located in the present-day provinces of Kurdistan, Kermanshah, Ilam, and Hamadan testify to Assyrian campaigns in these areas. This activity has to be understood in the context of Assyrian efforts to assert control over the Great Khorasan Road, which had already functioned as the dominant artery of commercial traffic through the region for millennia. This factor is at the heart of Assyrian involvement in western Iran. While a number of the earlier Neo-Assyrian kings-particularly Shalmaneser III, Adad-nerari III, and Shamshi-Adad V-carried out forays into Media, which implies crossing the Zagros into present-day Iran, these did not result in the establishment of any permanent presence. The definitive consolidation of such an Assyrian presence was left to Tiglath-pileser III, who campaigned in the region in his second (744 Bce) and ninth (737 Bce) regnal years, paving the way for the creation of the new provinces of Parsua and Bit-Hamban.
The Iron Age at Hasanlu, Iran New Perspectives by Megan Cifarelli
2019
The site of Hasanlu needs little introduction and is best known for the gruesome1destruction of its citadel that crushed hundreds of its inhabitants, as well as attackers, at the end of Period IVb. While excavations by Sir Aurel Stein in 1936 (1940; Ghirshman 1939) and by Hakemi and Rad (1950) in 1940’s had brought some attention to the site of Hasanlu, the excavations by the Joint Expedition of the University of Pennsylvania Museum, the Archaeological Service of Iran, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, led by Robert H. Dyson between 1956 and 1977 were critically important for opening up the study of the Iron Age in northwestern Iran (Fig. 1).2 As Ali Mousavi (2005, n. 11) observed and Oscar Muscarella (2006), Stephan Kroll (2009, 2010, 2013), Gabriel Pizzorno (2011) and Michael Danti (2013a) have meticulously documented, however, the publication of the site has been selective and incomplete, and reports provide conflicting data, analyses, and occasionally unsupported conclusions.3 This situation has been somewhat remedied by the publication in 2013 by Danti of a volume devoted to Levels VI through IVc (Hasanlu V: The Late Bronze and Iron I Periods).4 However, despite the existence of dozens of books, dissertations, book chapters, and journal articles dealing with various aspects of the archaeological record of Hasanlu, the definitive excavation report for Period IVb, an era critical for the understanding of the Iron Age in northwestern Iran, has yet to be written, and the full data set has not been published. The excavation records are held in the University of Pennsylvania Museum. Michael D. Danti of the Mosul Heritage Stabilization Program at the University of Pennsylvania serves as the principle investigator, and access to the records is restricted to a few researchers (this author included).
in Gavagnin K., Palermo R. (eds), Imperial Connections. Interactions and Expansions from Assyria to the Roman Period. Proceedings of the 5th "Broadening Horizons" Conference, Udine 5-8 June 2017 (West & East Monografie 3), Trieste: EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste, pp. 165-182., 2020
The aim of this paper is to give some insights on the results coming from the renewed excavations in Zincirli, in south-eastern Turkey, carried out by the Chicago-Tübingen Expedition, in order to analyze and bring new data to the discussion of the mutual relationships between Assyria and local communities in the northern Levant during the period of expansion of the kings of Assur into the Syrian and Anatolian far West. The northern Levant in the first half of the first millennium BC provides interesting case studies for the various levels of interaction between Assyria and the neighbouring regions. According to historical sources the region between southern Anatolia and northern Syria is included into the boundaries of the Neo Assyrian empire, with a remarkable increase of land control by the central power. Through the analysis of the archaeological data from the site of Zincirli, ancient capital of the kingdom of Sam’al, we try to identity, and see in which degree, intercultural processes can be detected and explained through the support of material culture. Luwian and Aramaean city-states, with their peculiar culture deeply rooted into Syrian Bronze Age and Anatolian background, confront themselves with the impact of Assyrian expansion from the campaigns of Ashurnasirpal II to the definitive inclusion into the empire by Tiglath-pileser III and Sargon II. Can we assume elements of material culture as an asset to identify different levels of identities and interaction through this outgoing process?
In 1960, Robert H. Dyson, Jr. published a composite-paste cylinder seal found in level IVB at Hasanlu in Northwest Iran, and note d that "the rampant lion and bull (o n the seal) recall similar figures o n the silver cup" found at the site in 1958. 1 Subsequently , Edith Porada enumerated the qualities shared by the well-known gold bowl from HasanJu' and the silver cup. 2 In reference to the seal pu blished by Dyson , she suggested that it proba bly refresented a local style which would also include a decorated vase fragment of the same paste composition. With the discovery of the large quantity of ivory fragment s in Burned Building II at Hasanlu during the 1964 season, Oscar White Muscarella ob served that: "Many of the ivories appear to be the prod ucts of local craftsmen, since stylistic details are seen to be similar to th ose of o ther objects considered to be made locally, and because no immediate parallels are forthcoming from foreign centers. " 4 The notion of a "local style" at Hasanlu has since become enshrined in the literature. It is the purpose of the present article to examine (and to support) the validity of such a claim, and to attempt to view those qualities which characterize the Hasanlu local style in the perspective of the particular histo rical situation which pertained in Northwest Iran during the 9th century B.C. To pu rsue this top ic in the context of the present volume is especially satisfying, as the issues involved include aspects of culture history and process so much of interest to the Director of the Hasanlu Project, while at the same time , his initial observation on the seal and the silver cup reflects a sensitivity to visual material relevant to the art historian. 5 • • 5 My interest in the "local style" at Hasanlu grew out of a study of the copper/bronze horse 's breastplate (HAS. 74-24 l) found at the site in 1974. I am ve ry grateful to Dr. Dyson for his initial suggestion to work on the breastplate, as well as for his permission to pursue research on the local style once the breastplate was done. I trust he no w understands why I was so vague about where the eventual "loc al style" manuscript was to go.
The Archaeology of the Assyrian Empire: Cities, Landscapes and Material Culture
Ritual, war and conquest! This is our modern image of the Assyrian Empire, one of the most powerful territorial states of the ancient world and the Near East. Assyrians are famous for their ambitious patronage ofbuilding capital cities and cultivating landscapes, the architecture of their palaces and temples, the elaborate structure of state bureaucracy, taxation and provincial administration, military expeditions, mass deportations and sumptuous cult festivals, the rich corpus of commemorative inscriptions and libraries of literary texts and official documents. Assyrian palaces, temples, city gates and various public spaces of the Iron Age were famously surrounded by carved stone orthostats and a variety of monuments such as steles, obelisks, sculptures of royal figures and mythological beings. Several of these monuments featured pictorial narratives and commemorative inscriptions that communicated the official ideology of the state. This course investigates the longterm history and archaeology of Assyria in the Near Eastern political landscape from small trading center of Ashur in the early centuries of the second millennium BC to the collapse of the Neo-Assyrian Empire in the 7 th c. BC. Using evidence from archaeological excavations and regional surveys, textual documents and data from environmental studies, we will explore this important episode of Near Eastern history from the perspectives of material culture, space, place and landscape, cult practices and state ideology.