The Archaeology of Elam: Formation and Transformation of the Ancient Iranian State.

• Author: Mcmahon, Augusta
• Position: Review

The Archaeology of Elam: Formation and Transformation of the Ancient Iranian State. By D. T. POTTS. Cambridge: CAMBRIDGE UNIV. PRESS, 1999. Pp. xxviii + 490, illus. $85 (cloth); $37.95 (paper).

According to the "core-periphery" concept of political and social interaction, Elam should be "peripheral," often culturally dominated and at times politically controlled by Mesopotamia, and producer of a sparser indigenous textual tradition. This assignment to the periphery has been implicitly accepted by most who study Mesopotamia; and since it has been difficult to visit Elam since 1979, it is now very much a "dark" area to a generation of archaeologists and ancient historians. An accessible study of Elam is long overdue, making this book very welcome; and it goes a long way towards bringing Elam in from the periphery and restoring a true map of the region.

The theme underlying this work owes much to the critical scrutiny of nationalism and ethnicity current in historical and anthropological studies. What is under study is not just Elam as defined by Mesopotamia, but the "many Elams," both ancient and modern, as well as the processes of transformation and redefinition of Elam. Such analysis is a difficult task: Elam does not invent itself under that name until the early second millennium B.C., although the area has been called Elam by its Western neighbors from the mid-third millennium B.C. Since the concept of Elam was initially and primarily Mesopotamian and any internal unity was at times tenuous and often completely spurious, difficulties arise in definitions and identifications, both temporal and geographical.

The book has a traditional chronological organization, after the introduction and a chapter on the environmental setting. The chapter on prehistory is the only one to sit somewhat uncomfortably with the rest of the volume. The prehistoric inhabitants of the area later called Elam may have been related to some of the people later described by others as Elamites, but connections are so distant that serious justification is required for inclusion of the prehistoric material. In a straight study of Iranian archaeology, this chapter would be appropriate, but it is less so in what is described as a critical analysis of Elam. But it is certainly interesting, particularly the discussion of early texts and disparate numerical systems in Mesopotamian and Susiana. The conflicting positions of scholars interpreting the presence of Mesopotamian...