Deve Hüyük - the full catalogue

Following Friday's post, I found Roger Moorey's catalogue of finds.  It was embarrassingly easy and I don't know why my earlier searches didn't turn it up, but here goes anyway.  Although most of what's shown is in the form of line drawings, it's still a rich gallery of objects common to our time period.

An important note on time periods:  The site as a whole comprises several phases.  Deve Hüyük I seems to be Neo-Assyrian, while Deve Hüyük II is Achaemenid.  There's also a few Arsacid-period graves in phase II; these are termed Deve Hüyük III.  Therefore if you're interested in any particular object, you need to confirm which phase it belongs to.

Moorey states, on the basis of the long sword and hilt fragments from Persepolis (see OIP #69), that the flanged dagger was used throughout the Achaemenid period.  He also lends some credence to something I've long suspected, that this dagger is the same as the "Elamite" dagger worn by robe-clad Persians and Elamites in period art.

There's a lot of highly decorated pottery, including several "flasks" shaped like pointed amphorae but without handles.  A canteen broadly similar to the ones from Persepolis but slightly different in detail is here described as a "pilgrim flask," while another, highly decorated glazed one is considered to be of Egyptian influence.

Those looking to add more flare to high-class impressions may look to the variety of bronze bracelets, anklets, rings and earrings, many of which should be simple to fabricate from metal rod or strips with annealing and filing.  Beads of all sorts of materials appear, as well as small, ceramic human head and animal pendants.

Among toiletries are a pair of tweezers, several circular bronze mirrors, and tubes and applicator sticks for kohl, a kind of eyeliner.  The kohl tubes and sticks are not necessarily feminine accessories, as Xenophon claims that Astyages, like other Median men, wore "pencillings beneath his eyes."  (Some of the attached codes may clarify this but I'm only skimming for the time being.)

Achaemenid bronze bowls, rhytons, iron akinakai, sagarides, arrowheads, tanged javelin heads, a second gorytos cover decoration, snaffle bits, arm fibulae and cylinder seals mostly reinforce what we already know.  One socketed trilobate arrowhead is attached to a bronze chain for some reason, and most of the spearheads run to proportionally rather narrow, though they may have corroded at the edges.  There's also a bronze bell described as a horse fitting.

Deve Hüyük: An Achaemenid graveyard

Shortly before World War I, Charles Woolley and T.E. Lawrence excavated a site in northern Syria:  a graveyard for members of a Persian imperial garrison near the then-Assyrian city of Carchemish.  The site yielded many goods that would have been used in war and day-to-day life by Iranian troops in the 6th-4th centuries BC.  A gallery of finds may be viewed at the British Museum website.  Sadly, the majority of items are unillustrated, but I'd like to highlight a few that may be useful for your living history projects:

A spearhead, in case you needed a reminder just how small these things could be, especially in comparison to modern repros.

A javelin head, looking surprisingly unlike a spearhead.

An akinakes.  To this I would also add examples from Osprey's The Persian Army, also from Deve Hüyük.  Note on all examples the plain iron hilts with guards and grips forged as one piece, and also the short, broad fuller on the longer Osprey example.

A fibula (cloak pin) which should be good for your Cappadocian impression.  (Incidentally, Cappadocians are next week's Peoples of the Empire entry.)

A hand mirror.  Well, everyone needs one sooner or later.

A bronze plate cover for the top end of a gorytos.

The various bronze bowls are also worth checking out, and if you're doing a cavalry impression, you'll want a snaffle bit of appropriate shape.