Tapeh Tyalineh
A proto-Elamite administrative institution on the Great Khorasan Road, Kermanshah, Western Iran
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12556883 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Shokouh Khosravi (0000-0003-1863-4717, Tarbiat Modares University, corresponding author), Sajjad Alibaigi (0000-0002-8258-7436, Razi University), Mostafa Doosti, Holly Pittman (0000-0002-8446-6793, University of Pennsylvania), Naser Aminikhah (Razi University), Ali Khayani (0000-0003-2617-4765, University of Tehran) |
| Year | 2023 |
| Volume | 34 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 233-260 |
| Publication date | 2023-05-15 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1356-1863 • E-ISSN: 1474-0591 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s1356186322000803 |
| OpenAlex | W4376587656 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 7 |
The Mahidasht region is a vital cultural sphere on the Great Khorasan Road that has provided substantial evidence for administrative activity, which is considered to be an indicator of economic and political complexity in late prehistoric societies. This article discusses a corpus of bureaucratic artefacts from the site of Tapeh Tyalineh in the Kouzaran plain in the north of Mahidasht, including 52 jar sealings and 12 door sealings. The artefacts were found during the recent surveys conducted by two of the authors at Tapeh Tyalineh after reports were received of illegal diggings at the site by villagers who had used its soil to plaster the roofs of their houses and to level and cultivate their farmland. Tyalineh seal impressions are studied here in terms of style and iconography in order to date the corpus of administrative artefacts. Furthermore, applying a functionalist approach, the artefacts are examined to answer questions regarding the nature and function of the site. The results suggest that the corpus dates to the proto-Elamite era. The significance of the door sealings, as the most important artefact type from Tyalineh, is that at least a part of the site was devoted to administrative affairs, which probably involved holding certain commodities in rather small closed-mouthed jars and then securing them behind locked doors. The administrative technology not only at Tyalineh but also at Chogha Maran and Dehsavar in Mahidasht and Godin VI:1 in Kangavar attest to well-established Early Bronze Age administrative and economic institutions along the Khorasan Road in the Central Zagros, which were involved in interregional commercial interactions
Ancient history · Archaeology · Bureaucracy · Excavation · Geography · Human settlement · Iconography · Institution · Political science · Politics · Prehistory · Ancient Near East History · Eurasian Exchange Networks · History · Law · Linguistics and language evolution
Of storage and nomads. The sealings from Late Neolithic, Sabi Abyad, Syria
Sargon II in the Mahidasht
An Architectural Pattern in Late Fourth-Millennium BC Western Iran
Some Socio-Economic Evidence from Iron Age Societies of the Iranian Central Plateau
Early Bronze Age Clay Sealings from Chogha Maran, the West Central Zagros
Archaeological investigations in the Mahidasht, Western Iran, 1975
| Unique citing works | 2 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 2 |
| Citation span | 2025 - 2026 (2) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 2 |