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Document Details : Title: The Iron Age Platforms at Tepe Yahya Author(s): LAMBERG-KARLOVSKY, C.C. , MAGEE, P. Journal: Iranica Antiqua Volume: 34 Date: 1999 Pages: 41-52 DOI: 10.2143/IA.34.0.519105 Abstract : The Behistun inscription of Darius I provides several important pieces of data concerning the socio-political situation in Fars and Kerman at this time. Before the consolidation of the empire under Darius I there probably existed a series of powerful polities, perhaps organised along regional, tribal lines. Tepe Yahya is certain to be identified as one of the polities involved in such an independent regional-system. Two Iron Age platforms were exposed there in the 1973 excavations. The ceramic assemblage which characterises the platform and the village immediately before it lacks general parallels in other parts of Iran and perhaps attests to the localised and regional economic framework in which ceramics were exchanged. It is in this socio-political milieu that the platforms were constructed. They are highly suggestive of the use of a recognisable, Achaemenid power-symbol by the local leader of Tepe Yahya. However, in the administrative and political cohesion introduced by Darius I there was no room for such independence. The post-platform era witnesses the influx of ceramic shapes and decorative techniques which are paralleled through Iran. These surely attest to a uniformity in material culture which was brought around by the imperial organization introduced by Darius I. |
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