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CHAPTER XVI - THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE OF THE SECOND MILLENNIUM B.C. ON THE PERSIAN PLATEAU

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2008

By
Robert H. Dyson, Jr.
Edited by
I. E. S. Edwards ,
C. J. Gadd ,
N. G. L. Hammond  and
E. Sollberger
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Summary

The second millennium B.C. remains one of the most poorly known of all of the archaeological periods on the Persian plateau. Older excavations and limited surveys, summarized in several important articles and books, have yielded scattered information about pottery styles and burial practices. The limited nature of this information has encouraged a renewal of field work relating to the second millennium during the past decade. As a result, there is now sufficient new evidence to permit a tentative restructuring of some aspects of the interpretative problems involved, particularly in regard to the western and northern border areas of the plateau. In these areas many of the cultural patterns dating to the early second millennium had their inception in the third millennium, and had disappeared, or had been greatly modified, by the end of the first quarter of the second millennium. Many of the cultural patterns which then developed were in turn terminated in the third quarter of the millennium by the onset of the new ethnic movements and major political changes of the beginning Iron Age.

THE LATE THIRD AND EARLY SECOND MILLENNIA B.C.

During the late third and early second millennia b.c. the Persian plateau was divided into distinct cultural areas as indicated by the distribution of ceramic tradition: the Gurgan Grey Ware in Gurgan province in the north-east; the Giyān IV–III Painted Ware in eastern Luristān; and, between the two, the Yanik

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The Cambridge Ancient History
, pp. 686 - 715
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1973

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