Published Catalogue Text: Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern Bronzes at the Harvard Art Museums
This hoop with open ends is round in section. Thickest at the center, it narrows toward its flat terminals, which are incised with zigzags. Due to its weight and diameter, this piece is much too large to have been worn as a bracelet and was instead probably an anklet. Most anklets that have been found on skeletons are 9 to 13 cm in diameter; some examples, such as those found at the cemetery of Tepe Kazabad in central Luristan, are considerably larger. Anklets similar to this example were discovered at the site of Tepe Giyan in eastern Luristan and at Cemetery B of Tepe Sialk in northwest Iran where they were worn in pairs by both sexes (1). However, other evidence from Iron Age III contexts at the Luristan sites of Djubi-i Gauhar and Chamahzi Mumah suggests that anklets were a primarily female style of adornment (2).
Armlets are a jewelry type known from Neo-Assyrian art and texts of the first half of the first millennium BCE in Mesopotamia, and they have been discovered on skeletons in Achaemenid burials of the sixth to third centuries BCE (3). The form of armlets and anklets can be indistinguishable, and their diameter is not a consistent marker of function, as it would have varied in relation to the proportions of the wearer. It has been observed, however, that armlets generally weigh less than anklets. On this basis, although its discovery context is unknown, the heavy hoop presented here is described as an anklet.
It has been suggested that heavy metal anklets of this sort were actually a form of currency in Iron Age Iran (4). Coinage was not yet developed, and weight in metal was presumably used as the standard medium for exchange, although a barter economy would also have been in place. In any case, this ornament would probably have served to display the wealth, if not the social rank and position, of the individual to whom it belonged.
NOTES:
1. See G. Contenau and R. Ghirshman, Fouilles du Tépé-Giyan près de Néhavend, 1931 et 1932 (Paris, 1935) pls. 13-14 and 18; and R. Ghirshman, Fouilles de Sialk près de Kashan, 1933, 1934, 1937 (Paris, 1939) 2: pl. 49.
2. See E. Haerinck and B. Overlaet, Chamahzi Mumah: An Iron Age III Graveyard, Luristan Excavation Documents 2, Acta Iranica 33 (Leuven, 1998) 32; and A. Stein, Old Routes of Western Iran: Narrative of an Archaeological Journey Carried Out and Recorded (London, 1940) 249-50 and 295, nos. 28, 31, and 39, pls. 10 and 48.
3. See B. Musche, Vorderasiatischer Schmuck von den Anfängen bis zur Zeit der Achaemeniden (ca. 10.000-330 v.Chr.), Handbuch der Orientalistik: 7. Abt., Bd. 1.2.B., L.7 (Leiden, 1992) 279-81; and J. N. Postgate, “Rings, Torcs and Bracelets,” in Beiträge zur Altorientalischen Archäologie und Altertumskunde: Festschrift für Barthel Hrouda zum 65. Geburtstag, eds. P. Calmeyer et al. (Wiesbaden, 1994) 235-45, esp. 238.
4. See P. R. S. Moorey, Catalogue of the Ancient Persian Bronzes in the Ashmolean Museum (Oxford, 1971) 227-29.
Amy Gansell
