Friday, February 26, 2016

Further perspective on grave finds from Deve Hüyük

I stumbled across this Halehs World of Archaeology post on architecture at Paphos.  I haven't read the whole article yet but I was drawn to a section about three quarters of the way down discussing Deve Hüyük:

Also the pottery, “coarse redware lamps”, accompanying the dead soldiers, showed no likeness what so ever with any objects from the same period from Palestine, Syria or Iraq. However they do look extremely similar to finds in Dailaman in “…south-western shore of the Caspian Sea” in Iran.

Even though these finds do point to Iranian origins, they are not local to Persis or the Persians. It rather appears that these soldiers were from northern Iran, probably along the southern shores of the Caspian Sea, were also their “Cist tombs” would have been a local tradition. This region would have been during the Achaemenid period, under the Satrapy of Media.

Sobering thought there.

Most surprising for me is the line drawing featuring a dagger with a flanged tang and crescent pommel.  I may be the last to find this out, but I find the implication interesting that this type of dagger, popularly lumped in with the Luristan bronzes but actually widely used in northern Mesopotamia and northern Iran, is accurate (when made of iron) to at least the beginning of the Achaemenid period.

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