Elite Mortuary Culture at Susa

A crucial task of archaeological research today is to comprehend and critically interpret the rich legacy from early excavations of ancient Near Eastern settlement sites. Yasmina Wicks explores the problematic and rarely consulted early 20th century records of excavations by French delegations at the UNESCO World Heritage-listed site of Susa in what is now southwest Iran. Through the study of published and unpublished documents, a new dataset of over 250 clay coffin burials, never before examined, is compiled, revealing a mortuary practice that began to flourish in the city at around 2000 BC. These coffins were not used as upright containers, but were turned upside down to cover the corpse, a distinctive method that is also documented in contemporary settlements in neighboring southern Mesopotamia. <i>Elite Mortuary Culture at Susa</i> begins with a discussion of the possibilities and limitations in the use of the legacy data, and then proceeds to an analysis of the typology, chronology, location distribution and frequency of the coffins. It then examines the rich and varied grave goods, the burial rites and the demographic profile associated with their use. It finishes by discussing the general significance of the inverted clay coffin and concludes that it can be seen as an essential feature of Susa’s bicultural society, offering a new perspective on the cultural links of Elamites and Mesopotamians as the city left the political embrace of Mesopotamia’s Ur III dynasties at the end of the Early Bronze Age and became the seat of the Elamite rulers from the Zagros Mountains in the lowlands. The mortuary behavior associated with the coffins, initially characterized by an unprecedented consumption of wealth, is interpreted as a response to new socio-political and socio-economic conditions both locally and across the Near East in the defining early years of the Middle Bronze Age.