Luristan bronzes (rarely "Lorestān", "Lorestāni" etc. in sources in English) are small

cast Cast may refer to: Music * Cast (band), an English alternative rock band * Cast (Mexican band), a progressive Mexican rock band * The Cast, a Scottish musical duo: Mairi Campbell and Dave Francis * ''Cast'', a 2012 album by Trespassers William ...

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 Iranian may refer to: * Iran, a sovereign state * Iranian peoples, the speakers of the Iranian languages. The term Iranic peoples is also used for this term to distinguish the pan ethnic term from Iranian, used for the people of Iran * Iranian lan ...

, possibly related to the modern

Lur people Lurs () are an Iranian people living in the mountains of western Iran. The four Luri branches are the Bakhtiari, Mamasani, Kohgiluyeh and Lur proper, who are principally linked by the Luri language. Lorestan Province is named after the Lur ...

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 Openwork or open-work is a term in art history, architecture and related fields for any technique that produces decoration by creating holes, piercings, or gaps that go right through a solid material such as metal, wood, stone, pottery, cloth, l ...

, like the related metalwork of Scythian art. They represent the art of a nomadic or

transhumant Transhumance is a type of pastoralism or nomadism, a seasonal movement of livestock between fixed summer and winter pastures. In montane regions (''vertical transhumance''), it implies movement between higher pastures in summer and lower val ...

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 The Master of Animals, Lord of Animals, or Mistress of the Animals is a motif in ancient art showing a human between and grasping two confronted animals. The motif is very widespread in the art of the Ancient Near East and Egypt. The figure may ...

" motif, showing a human positioned between and grasping two

confronted animals Confronted animals, or confronted-animal as an adjective, where two animals face each other in a symmetrical pose, is an ancient bilateral motif in art and artifacts studied in archaeology and art history. The "anti-confronted animals" is the o ...

is common but typically highly stylized. Some female "mistress of animals" are seen.

Discovery

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 Armenia (), , group=pron officially the Republic of Armenia,, is a landlocked country in the Armenian Highlands of Western Asia.The UNbr>classification of world regions places Armenia in Western Asia; the CIA World Factbook , , and ''O ...

and

Anatolia Anatolia, tr, Anadolu Yarımadası), and the Anatolian plateau, also known as Asia Minor, is a large peninsula in Western Asia and the westernmost protrusion of the Asian continent. It constitutes the major part of modern-day Turkey. The re ...

. 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 Samos (, also ; el, Σάμος ) is a Greek island in the eastern Aegean Sea, south of Chios, north of Patmos and the Dodecanese, and off the coast of western Turkey, from which it is separated by the -wide Mycale Strait. It is also a sepa ...

and

Crete Crete ( el, Κρήτη, translit=, Modern: , Ancient: ) is the largest and most populous of the Greek islands, the 88th largest island in the world and the fifth largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, after Sicily, Sardinia, Cyprus, ...

, but none in other parts of

Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...

or the

Near East The ''Near East''; he, המזרח הקרוב; arc, ܕܢܚܐ ܩܪܒ; fa, خاور نزدیک, Xāvar-e nazdik; tr, Yakın Doğu is a geographical term which roughly encompasses a transcontinental region in Western Asia, that was once the hist ...

Context, dating and stylistic development

The term "Luristan bronze" is not normally used for earlier bronze artifacts from Lorestān between the fourth millennium BC and the (Iranian)

Bronze Age The Bronze Age is a historic period, lasting approximately from 3300 BC to 1200 BC, characterized by the use of bronze, the presence of writing in some areas, and other early features of urban civilization. The Bronze Age is the second pri ...

(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 Mesopotamia ''Mesopotamíā''; ar, بِلَاد ٱلرَّافِدَيْن or ; syc, ܐܪܡ ܢܗܪ̈ܝܢ, or , ) is a historical region of Western Asia situated within the Tigris–Euphrates river system, in the northern part of the ...

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 The Neo-Assyrian Empire was the fourth and penultimate stage of ancient Assyrian history and the final and greatest phase of Assyria as an independent state. Beginning with the accession of Adad-nirari II in 911 BC, the Neo-Assyrian Empire grew ...

. As a mountainous rural region, what the rise and fall of these empires meant for the region remains largely uncertain; a

climate change In common usage, climate change describes global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes to ...

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." The stylistic development of the pieces is now thought to be from naturalistic depictions of humans and animals towards stylization, though it is not yet clear if this was a consistent trend. This reverses the trend proposed by Michael Rostovtzeff, one of the earliest writers on the bronzes.

Types of objects

Though there is a wide range of objects, certain types are especially common, distinctive, and hence "canonical".

Animal finials, standards and tubes

Among the most characteristic are a range of objects with a hollow socket or open ring, designed to be fixed at the top of a pole or other vertical support, often using a separate intervening fitting. These may be described as finials, standards and tubes; Muscarella and other writers use all these terms, differentiating between them on the basis of the form of their decoration alone. Unlike some other types of objects, very few of this group have been found by the archaeological explorations. They may also have been used with perishable elements that have not survived, either as additional decoration or to hold the ensemble together. Many ideas for their function have been suggested, without any general consensus being reached; one persistent suggestion is that leafy or flowering branches were inserted to top them. The numbers surviving suggest that the objects were not rare, and may have been affordable by most families. Standard Finial LACMA M

Taking the groups in what is now generally considered to be their broad chronological sequence, the first are the "animal finials", with two rampant

, generally a pair of large-horned ibex (or goats or mouflon sheep) or felines, facing each other with a central tube or open rings (formed at the junctions of their front and hind feet) between them. The

bezoar ibex The bezoar ibex (''Capra aegagrus aegagrus'') is a wild goat subspecies that is native to the montane forested areas in the Caucasus and the Zagros Mountains. Characteristics The bezoar ibex, which weighs around 60kg (130lb) is known particu ...

(''capra aegagrus aegagrusis''), the local wild species of goat or ibex, was already domesticated millennia before; it has large curved horns with knobbly ribs. Compared to later types, the animals are more naturalistic, especially the ibex group, though not so much that their precise species can be very confidently determined. In some examples the figures are "demons", with human features except for their large horns. The next group is a less common type, often called the "idol standard". Here the feline "animal finial" type has in addition a detached human head in between the two heads of the animals, held by their front paws. The designs have become openwork, with enclosed spaces formed by the human head and the head and neck of each feline, and others by their hind legs. The meaning, if any, of this group is unclear, but they seem if anything to reverse the meaning of the next, much more common group, called the "master of animals standards". These have a fuller figure, now seen down to the waist with an essentially human shape (including what may be divine and "demonic" figures) in between the two animals, grasping them to form the

motif, already over 2000 years old at this point, and a mainstay of

iconography Iconography, as a branch of art history, studies the identification, description and interpretation of the content of images: the subjects depicted, the particular compositions and details used to do so, and other elements that are distinct fro ...

in the art of Mesopotamia. Now the arms of the human usually extend to grasp the necks of the animals. All the figures are highly stylized, and often the whole composition is repeated underneath, facing in the opposite direction. The bodies of all three figures tend to merge at the middle into the central tube, before diverging again at the lower limbs. The "zoomorphic juncture", where the body of one animal turns into another, is very often seen, with a further human head and pair of animal heads appearing at the waist level of the top set of figures. This second human head often also has a body, and two further animal heads, these typically of cocks, project from it lower down. In the final group, called the "anthromorphic tubes", this lower figure with projecting cock's heads is all that is left, or just the human figure, of which only the head may be at all recognisable. Thus the simplest types are just a tube with a human face near the top, sometimes a Janus face with two heads back to back, and perhaps some simple mouldings on the tube. Whether these groups actually represent a chronological development with one type succeeding another is unclear. Other tubes are comparable, but use animal rather than human features. File:Standard Finial LACMA M.76.97.52.jpg, Ibex animal finial with rings File:Finial LACMA M.76.97.47.jpg, Feline animal finial with rings File:Finial LACMA M.76.97.34.jpg, Feline animal finial with rings File:Finial in the form of 'Master of Animals' LACMA M.76.97.46.jpg, "Idol standard" type File:Standard Finial LACMA M.76.97.92 (2 of 2).jpg, Master of Animals standard File:Finial in the form of 'Master of Animals' LACMA M.76.97.37.jpg, Master of Animals standard, double composition File:Finial Support LACMA M.76.174.47.jpg, Support piece File:Finial or Decorated Tube LACMA M.76.97.85.jpg, "Anthromorphic tube"

Horse cheekpieces

Another common class of bronzes is pairs of horse cheekpieces from bits; when complete these come with a bar between them that goes in the horse's mouth. There are often rings in the upper or rear parts of the plates, for securing straps to tie round the horse's head. These are flat openwork plates, with a reinforced central hole for the bit mouthpiece to go through; where complete sets survive these are held in place by the ends of the mouthpiece bar being curled back. Designs are varied, but most common are animals, very often in fantastic versions with wings, and the Master of Animals. Other subjects include charioteers, and a subject with two figures flanking a tree-like object. Many examples survive as single plates, perhaps separated after they were dug up. The common story that the pieces were often found placed underneath the heads of men in burials seems not to be true. Most pieces were found in unrecorded contexts, but one example of a Luristan horse burial is known; it is unclear if it was from the same period. Though horse riding was very common among Near Eastern elites by this date, who all used some type of bit, this large style of cheekpiece is only found in Luristan. The rigid single-piece mouthpiece bar, secured by bent back ends, is also unusual; elsewhere more flexible mouthpieces are found. Many pieces have small spikes on the reverse of the plates; it is thought these were either used to control the horse, or to fix backing pads of softer material. File:Britishmuseumwingedgoatbit_%28cropped%29.jpg, Pair of cheekpieces with intact bit; the loops at the ends of the torso can be seen File:Cheek Piece from a Horse Bit LACMA M.76.97.99.jpg, Single plate with a winged sphinx File:Cheekpiece from a Horse Bit LACMA M.76.97.102.jpg, Master of Animals File:Cheekpiece from a Horse Bit LACMA M.76.97.130.jpg, Charioteer

Pin heads

Large decorated pin heads are the third common and distinctive type of Luristan bronzes, falling into two distinct groups: sculptural and openwork designs, many using the iconographic repertoire of other types of objects, and flat, normally round, disk heads. Their use is uncertain; they were probably both used as votive offerings, as the numbers found in the excavated temple at Surkh Dum suggests, but also worn as decoration or for fastening clothes. Other uses have been suggested. These have not been found in excavated tombs. Pin heads in bone and

faience Faience or faïence (; ) is the general English language term for fine tin-glazed pottery. The invention of a white pottery glaze suitable for painted decoration, by the addition of an oxide of tin to the slip of a lead glaze, was a major ...

were also found at Surkh Dum. The disk-headed pins are made from sheet metal by repoussé and chasing work,

engraving Engraving is the practice of incising a design onto a hard, usually flat surface by cutting grooves into it with a burin. The result may be a decorated object in itself, as when silver, gold, steel, or glass are engraved, or may provide an in ...

and other techniques, so differing from the types described above, which are

. Many designs centre on a large face, and in general humans predominate over animals in their decoration, another difference to the other types. The diameter of the disk is typically between 6 and 9 centimetres, and the whole pin and head up to about 20 centimetres. Similar large face designs are found on some other plaques of uncertain purpose. The faces are mostly rounded to fill a circular space, and may be intended as female. They lack beards, and some full figures are clearly female, sitting with open legs displaying a

vulva The vulva (plural: vulvas or vulvae; derived from Latin for wrapper or covering) consists of the external female sex organs. The vulva includes the mons pubis (or mons veneris), labia majora, labia minora, clitoris, vestibular bulbs, vulv ...

, perhaps shown in

childbirth Childbirth, also known as labour and delivery, is the ending of pregnancy where one or more babies exits the internal environment of the mother via vaginal delivery or caesarean section. In 2019, there were about 140.11 million births glob ...

; in other pins this is clearly the case. These pieces were presumably votives for fertility. The eyes are sometimes inlaid in white, with a black dot for the pupil. The face may occupy most of the disk, or be small, at the centre of a wide border with other subjects. Other designs feature a wide range of subjects, with some purely decorative motifs, and others featuring some complex, mainly religious, scenes with many figures ("odd-looking demons and animals apparently involved in cultic and mythological activities", as Muscarella describes them). File:Mounting Pin for a Finial LACMA M.76.97.223 (2 of 2).jpg,

Ibex An ibex (plural ibex, ibexes or ibices) is any of several species of wild goat (genus ''Capra''), distinguished by the male's large recurved horns, which are transversely ridged in front. Ibex are found in Eurasia, North Africa and East Africa ...

or mouflon pin head File:Mounting Pin for a Finial LACMA M.76.97.224 (3 of 3).jpg, Human on pin head File:Openwork Pinhead LACMA M.76.97.185.jpg, Pinhead with idol standard motif File:Openwork Pinhead LACMA M.76.97.205.jpg, Openwork pin head File:Lurestan Fibula (4484325444).jpg, Disk pin with woman giving birth, flanked by antelopes File:Disc - headed Pin LACMA M.76.97.138 (2 of 2).jpg, Animal-headed deity as master of animals, holding two panthers by their tails File:Votive pin with decorated disc, 800-600 BCE, silver, Luristan, Cleveland Museum of Art.jpg, Unusual silver pin with complex scene File:Disc - headed Pin LACMA M.76.97.144.jpg, Disk pin; face with one remaining inlaid eye

Other types

Other types include bronzes centred on a large ring, mostly decorated with animals in way similar to the finials and cheekpieces. These perhaps were part of horse-harnesses. Large socketed pieces are assumed to be handles for whetstones. Other pieces made from sheet metal include sheets for the front covers of quivers, typically divided vertically into registers with small scenes. There are cups and

situlae Situla (plural ''situlae''), from the Latin word for bucket or pail, is the term in archaeology and art history for a variety of elaborate bucket-shaped vessels from the Iron Age to the Middle Ages, usually with a handle at the top. All types ma ...

, both with rounded bottoms. Weapons are common, including a type of "spiked axehead" with spreading strips or spikes behind the axehead; these are also found in miniature votive versions. Some examples seem to have had "spikes" that were designed to be functional in combat, others perhaps not. A kind of long "

halberd A halberd (also called halbard, halbert or Swiss voulge) is a two-handed pole weapon that came to prominent use during the 13th, 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries. The word ''halberd'' is cognate with the German word ''Hellebarde'', deriving from ...

-axe" has the head of an animal perched at the top of the blade, and spikes on the other side. Pieces of bronze jewellery such as rings, bracelets pendants and arm or anklets are also found.Muscarella, 180–181 File:Ring, Iran, Luristan, 8th-7th centuries BCE, Honolulu Academy of Arts.JPG, Ring, for harness? File:Beaker LACMA M.76.97.348.jpg, Nipple beaker or situla File:VAM - Luristan Axt.jpg, Spiked axehead File:Halberd-axe Luristan MBA Lyon InvE697-a.jpg, Halberd-axe File:Whetstone Socket LACMA M.76.97.511.jpg, Whetstone socket File:Whetstone Socket LACMA M.76.97.38.jpg, Whetstone socket, Master of Animals Image:Luristan Bronze 2.jpg, Quiver-cases, swords and spiked and

-axes,

Louvre The Louvre ( ), or the Louvre Museum ( ), is the world's most-visited museum, and an historic landmark in Paris, France. It is the home of some of the best-known works of art, including the ''Mona Lisa'' and the '' Venus de Milo''. A central ...

Image:Luristan Bronze 1.jpg, Harness pieces and disc headed pins in the Louvre

Notes

References

* "EI I" = Muscarella, Oscar White
"Bronzes of Luristan"
1989, ''Encyclopedia Iranica'' * "EI II" = Overlaet, Bruno
"Luristan bronzes i, the Field Research"
2006, ''Encyclopedia Iranica'' * "EI III" = Overlaet, Bruno
"Luristan bronzes ii, Chronology"
2006, ''Encyclopedia Iranica'' * Frankfort, Henri, ''The Art and Architecture of the Ancient Orient'', Pelican History of Art, 4th ed 1970, Penguin (now Yale History of Art), * Muscarella, Oscar White, ''Bronze and Iron: Ancient Near Eastern Artifacts in the Metropolitan Museum of Art'', 1988, Metropolitan Museum of Art, , 9780870995255
Google books

External links

Lorestān bronze weapons and artifacts
– World Museum of Man Collection {{DEFAULTSORT:Lorestan Bronze Archaeological artefact types Bronzeware Archaeological discoveries in Iran Lorestan Province Kermanshah Province Ancient Near East art and architecture Persian art Iranian art Iron Age art