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Luristan bronze
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Luristan bronze
Luristan bronzes (rarely "Lorestān", "Lorestāni" etc. in sources in English) are small cast objects decorated with bronze sculpture from the Early Iron Age which have been found in large numbers in Lorestān Province and Kermanshah in western Iran. They include a great number of ornaments, tools, weapons, horse-fittings and a smaller number of vessels including situlae, and those found in recorded excavations are generally found in burials. The ethnicity of the people who created them remains unclear, though they may well have been Iranian, possibly related to the modern Lur people who have given their name to the area. They probably date to between about 1000 and 650 BC.
The bronzes tend to be flat and use openwork, like the related metalwork of Scythian art. They represent the art of a nomadic or transhumant people, for whom all possessions needed to be light and portable, and necessary objects such as weapons, finials (perhaps for tent-poles), horse-harness fittings, pins, cups and small fittings are highly decorated over their small surface area. Representations of animals are common, especially goats or sheep with large horns, and the forms and styles are distinctive and inventive. The "Master of Animals" motif, showing a human positioned between and grasping two confronted animals is common but typically highly stylized. Some female "mistress of animals" are seen.
Luristan bronze objects came to the notice of the world art market from the late 1920s and were excavated in considerable quantities by local people, "wild tribesmen who did not encourage the competition of qualified excavators", and taken through networks of dealers, latterly illegally, to Europe or America, without information about the contexts in which they were found. Previous sporadic examples reaching the West had been assigned to various places, including Armenia and Anatolia. There is strong suspicion that the many thousands of pieces sourced from the art trade include some forgeries.
Since 1938 several scientific excavations have been conducted by American, Danish, British, Belgian, and Iranian archaeologists on the cemeteries in areas including the northern Pish Kuh valleys and the southern Pusht Kuh of Lorestān; these are terms for the eastern "front" and western "back" slopes of the Kabīrkūh range of mountains, part of the larger Zagros Mountains, which define the region where the bronzes seem to have been found. How these cemeteries related to contemporary settlements remains unclear.
Somewhat curiously, two very characteristic Luristan pieces have been excavated in the Greek world, on Samos and Crete, but none in other parts of Iran or the Near East.
The term "Luristan bronze" is not normally used for earlier bronze artifacts from Lorestān between the fourth millennium BC and the (Iranian) Bronze Age (c. 2900–1250 BC), although they are often quite similar. These earlier bronze objects, including those from the Elamite Empire, which included Lorestān, were broadly similar to those found in Mesopotamia and on the Iranian Plateau, though as in the later pieces, animals are a very common subject in small bronze pieces. From slightly before the period of the canonical bronzes, a number of daggers or short swords said to come from Luristan are inscribed with the names of Mesopotamian kings, perhaps reflecting patterns of military service.
For most of the period of the bronzes it was, at least in theory, part of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. As a mountainous rural region, what the rise and fall of these empires meant for the region remains largely uncertain; a climate change before 1000 BC seems to have significantly affected the area. The few pieces attributed to Luristan that carry inscriptions are unrecorded pieces from the antiquities market.
Archaeologists divide the periods producing the bronzes into "Luristan Late Iron" (Age) I to III. Luristan Late Iron II was less productive, and remains less well understood. Dates for these periods "remain fluid" but "it is possible to suggest that the material from Luristan Iron I was manufactured in the years around 1000 B.C., that of Iron II about 900/800–750, and that of Iron III about 750/725–650."
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Luristan bronze
Luristan bronzes (rarely "Lorestān", "Lorestāni" etc. in sources in English) are small cast objects decorated with bronze sculpture from the Early Iron Age which have been found in large numbers in Lorestān Province and Kermanshah in western Iran. They include a great number of ornaments, tools, weapons, horse-fittings and a smaller number of vessels including situlae, and those found in recorded excavations are generally found in burials. The ethnicity of the people who created them remains unclear, though they may well have been Iranian, possibly related to the modern Lur people who have given their name to the area. They probably date to between about 1000 and 650 BC.
The bronzes tend to be flat and use openwork, like the related metalwork of Scythian art. They represent the art of a nomadic or transhumant people, for whom all possessions needed to be light and portable, and necessary objects such as weapons, finials (perhaps for tent-poles), horse-harness fittings, pins, cups and small fittings are highly decorated over their small surface area. Representations of animals are common, especially goats or sheep with large horns, and the forms and styles are distinctive and inventive. The "Master of Animals" motif, showing a human positioned between and grasping two confronted animals is common but typically highly stylized. Some female "mistress of animals" are seen.
Luristan bronze objects came to the notice of the world art market from the late 1920s and were excavated in considerable quantities by local people, "wild tribesmen who did not encourage the competition of qualified excavators", and taken through networks of dealers, latterly illegally, to Europe or America, without information about the contexts in which they were found. Previous sporadic examples reaching the West had been assigned to various places, including Armenia and Anatolia. There is strong suspicion that the many thousands of pieces sourced from the art trade include some forgeries.
Since 1938 several scientific excavations have been conducted by American, Danish, British, Belgian, and Iranian archaeologists on the cemeteries in areas including the northern Pish Kuh valleys and the southern Pusht Kuh of Lorestān; these are terms for the eastern "front" and western "back" slopes of the Kabīrkūh range of mountains, part of the larger Zagros Mountains, which define the region where the bronzes seem to have been found. How these cemeteries related to contemporary settlements remains unclear.
Somewhat curiously, two very characteristic Luristan pieces have been excavated in the Greek world, on Samos and Crete, but none in other parts of Iran or the Near East.
The term "Luristan bronze" is not normally used for earlier bronze artifacts from Lorestān between the fourth millennium BC and the (Iranian) Bronze Age (c. 2900–1250 BC), although they are often quite similar. These earlier bronze objects, including those from the Elamite Empire, which included Lorestān, were broadly similar to those found in Mesopotamia and on the Iranian Plateau, though as in the later pieces, animals are a very common subject in small bronze pieces. From slightly before the period of the canonical bronzes, a number of daggers or short swords said to come from Luristan are inscribed with the names of Mesopotamian kings, perhaps reflecting patterns of military service.
For most of the period of the bronzes it was, at least in theory, part of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. As a mountainous rural region, what the rise and fall of these empires meant for the region remains largely uncertain; a climate change before 1000 BC seems to have significantly affected the area. The few pieces attributed to Luristan that carry inscriptions are unrecorded pieces from the antiquities market.
Archaeologists divide the periods producing the bronzes into "Luristan Late Iron" (Age) I to III. Luristan Late Iron II was less productive, and remains less well understood. Dates for these periods "remain fluid" but "it is possible to suggest that the material from Luristan Iron I was manufactured in the years around 1000 B.C., that of Iron II about 900/800–750, and that of Iron III about 750/725–650."
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