The materiality of life and death: Dress ornaments and shifting identities at Hasanlu, Iran

Summary

The site of Hasanlu, Iran, was destroyed thoroughly by a marauding army in approximately 800 BCE, leaving a hulk of smoking rubble that was a virtual tomb for the hundreds of residents and combatants who weren’t able to escape its citadel. The excavations of Hasanlu, led by Robert H. Dyson of the University of Pennsylvania Museum, took place between 1956 and 1977, and uncovered a remarkable range of contexts containing personal ornaments within the relatively narrow historical horizon of Hasanlu Period IVb (ca 800-1050 BCE). From the bodies of fallen victims, to temple treasuries and elite residences, to a cemetery with nearly 100 burials, the artifacts relating to dress and adornment played a critical role in the construction and perennial renegotiation of identity for the men and women at Hasanlu. This paper examines shifts to dress practices at Hasanlu during this period, arguing that transformations to the regulatory schema by which objects and individuals are gendered are manifestations of changes to the way this community conceived of gender as a social category.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Adornment, Personal Ornamentation, and the Construction of Identity: A Global Archaeological Perspective   •
• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 13257