An Introduction to the Socio-Cultural Bonds between Northwest and Southeast Iran in the Bronze Age: A Case Study of Painted Pottery

Socio-cultural ties and similarities among different parts of the Iranian plateau in late prehistory are a primary concern of Iranian archeology. Notwithstanding their differing climates and geographical distances, the northwest and southeast quadrants of the plateau archaeologically exhibit a remarkable degree of homogeneity and similarities in the painted motifs of pottery vessels. The question thus arises: what makes them similar, and what underlying sociocultural factors contribute to the emergence of such similarities despite the geographical dimension and climatic heterogeneity? The authors approach these questions through the hypothesis that despite the theory of the mosaic of ethnicities and climates, which views the climatic heterogeneity and geographical remoteness as obstacles precluding cultural convergence across the Iranian plateau in prehistory, these parallels can indeed be justified by the “Great Oriental Society” theory and Lévi-Strauss’s “cultural structuralism.” The classification of painted motifs underpins the methodology adopted here. The motifs on the pottery from each region were classified — based on their typological description, classification, and relative chronology — and finally compared to pin down and analyze their common attributes. It is noteworthy that neither the archaeological context nor the typology of the form of vessels was addressed here. The similarities between the motifs of the Bronze Age pottery traditions in the northwestern and southeastern Iranian plateau indicate that the “Great Oriental Society” theory of Ravasani can explain cultural integration in the two disparate regions, an observation that can be interpreted by Lévi-Strauss’s structuralism.