Yousef Madjidzadeh is a happy man. He thinks he's found Iran's own Bronze Age culture. Photo by Newsha Tavolakian.

On a recent visit to the Archaeological Museum of Istanbul, Turkey I came across a display of artifacts brought back from Mesopotamia by Ottoman sultans. Within one of the cabinets I saw an artifact that was out of place. It was a vase carved from a smoky grey stone known as chlorite. Its color and shape, and moreover the carvings on it, were similar to dozens of similar objects I had seen just months before in another country. But I had not seen them in Iraq, the country that now covers most of ancient Mesopotamia. I had seen them in eastern Iran.

This little discovery made me recall the interesting case of Jiroft, a town in Kerman province that I made a special effort to visit in 2007. I was very curious to see Jiroft because, since 2000, an abundance of artifacts, including hundreds of chlorite objects, had been found there. One interpretation is that a major Bronze Age culture once existed in the area. That's what the leader of current excavations at Jiroft, Dr. Yousef Madjidzadeh, thinks. He suggests that the few chlorite vessels found at Mesopotamian sites, apparently including the one that appears in the museum in Istanbul, were either imported from the Jiroft area or manufactured by craftsmen from Iran who had relocated.

Excavations at Konar Sandal B are exposing what might be a Bronze Age citadel. Not far from this site, a flash flood exposed numerous ancient graves. Photo by Newsha Tavolakian.

The main excavations Madjidzadeh runs are at Konar Sandal A and B, two mounds only a short drive from downtown Jiroft. The mounds aren’t much to look at, but the information coming out of them and other nearby sites is stunning. One mound appears to have been, perhaps in the Bronze Age, a “citadel” and the other a “zigurrat.” A citadel implies a fortress and a zigurrat implies tiered platforms. I couldn't really see either as layman, but I was impressed that if the "zigurrat" is really a zigurrat at Konar Sandal A, then it is one of the earliest in the world. And at the "citadel," Konar Sandal B, archaeologists have uncovered a life size, or larger, human figure sculpted from mud or mud brick. It had been painted to look like it was wearing a feline pelt. If this sculpture is associated with Bronze Age layers, it will be among the earliest of such figures in the world. Unfortunately it is missing its head. The earliest known statue of this sort from Egypt, and I believe the world, is from Heirakonpolis. It dates from 3000 B.C. It is also incomplete, but in much worse shape. It is in over 500 pieces.

Madjizadeh suggests that the Jiroft culture represents what is actually Aratta, a place referred to by Mesopotamian scribes, but lost to time. This view is not universally accepted and other lost cities have been suggested as its true identity. Many scholars await further publication of results. Holly Pittman of the University of Pennsylvania, a close collaborator of Madjizadeh, put "Aratta" in perspective at a recent archaeology conference. She described how the idea of Bronze Age culture consisting of a few isolated mega-cultural centers, ie; Egypt, Mesopotamia, and the Indus Valley was simplistic. She showed a map illustrating numerous more or less contiguous cultural pockets stretching from Egypt to the Indus Valley. Aratta, or whatever Jiroft was, was one of these.

Top: An intricately patterned cup. Middle: a cup with a horned "devil" figure wrestling with two snakes. Bottom: a Scorpion-shaped object whose purpose is unknown to me. Photos by author. Courtesy of the Jiroft Museum.

I’m rooting for Jiroft as a center for early culture. The art style is among the most engaging that I’ve seen from this period. The chlorite objects, mostly vessels, housed in museums in Jiroft, Kerman, and Tehran, have a charm to them that I find captivating. Among the patterns that caught my eye were wonderful scenes of desert antelope and palms; struggles with men, snakes, and big cats; and intricate patterns made of scorpions. There’s even some writing, as yet undeciphered, which, if it survives criticism that it is faked, would shift this culture from a proto-historic ranking to historic.

And there’s the catch. Many of the artifacts found at Jiroft were found by locals who grabbed them after a flash flood had exposed many tombs. The antiquities market was flooded with material from Jiroft. Other than the artifacts excavated by Madjizadeh, it might be hard to know where things came from, and what is real vs. fake. Even the tablet on which the writing was discovered has been criticized as a fake.

Iran held its Second Annual Jiroft conference on May 5. If Jiroft can be all Majizadeh and others want it to be, it will be a real archaeological coup for Iran. There’s nothing like being one of the cradles of civilization.

Is Jiroft all it is pumped up to be? What do you think?

Check out some video of the Jiroft Museum and Konar Sandal B at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UG8W3tmJ-U0.

Iran

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