ELAMortuary’s work plan was designed so that each RO built on the previous one. RO1 entailed collection of burial data to interrogate in RO2-4. Data sources included archaeological reports, books, and articles, theses, and archives of field notes, short reports, and photographs. Much of the data was extracted from pre-WWII legacy documentation in which many burials were undated or incorrectly dated. Since change over time was central to the project objectives, a critical task was to assign, or reassign, burials to chronological phases relying on any contextual or stratigraphic information, or, most often, datable grave goods. The final dataset of over 3,000 burials was deposited in an open access database with a website front end through which data can be searched and downloaded in csv format to facilitate reuse. To identify chronological variation, RO2 targeted variables such as disposal area, burial type, single/multiple burial, orientation, body arrangement, and grave assemblages. It also examined grave good properties (e.g. typology, function, origin, economic and social value), spatial arrangements, placement of materials in physical relationships with each other and with the body to create meaning, and construction of identities and ideal social relations. Epigraphic references to mortuary practices also contributed evidence from ca. 1800 BCE onward.
RO3 examined the social significance of the chronological changes and RO4 measured the findings against the “rise of civilization” model. RO3-4 results deemed most fruitful for publication were on the Early Bronze Age (ca. 2900-2000 BCE) to Middle Bronze Age (ca. 2000-1600 BCE) transition, which brought social instability and change across the Near East. Over 250 never-before-studied clay coffin burials dating to this transition, were published as a monograph: Elite Mortuary Culture at Susa: An analysis of early Middle Bronze Age clay coffin burials (2024, Harrassowitz). It attributes changes in mortuary practices at Susa, namely, a new clay coffin burial type and an unprecedented consumption of wealth in graves, to a complex blend of factors including cultural ties to Mesopotamia, new political and economic conditions, increased opportunities for private wealth accumulation, and intensified global connectivity. A larger subset of burials dating to ca. 2400-1700 BCE was published in “Production and Mortuary Consumption of Copper-Base Materials at Susa in the Early to Middle Bronze Age Transition” (Old World: Journal of Ancient Africa and Eurasia 3: 1-38), which illuminates an increase in deployment of copper-base products at Susa to give structure to an increasingly stratified society. A second article, “The Tomb of Two Priestesses?” (appendix of inscriptions by host supervisor G.P. Basello, Asia Anteriore Antica, under review), examined construction of royal-religious elite identities in the turbulent years leading up to the Persian empire.
Other exploitation and dissemination activities included seminars, conference papers and workshops. Amongst the most significant were a conference paper “From Elam to Persia: Continuity (and Change) in the Mortuary Record” in Transmission and Transformation in the Elamite and Achaemenid Cultures (1/12/2023, Unibo/ISMEO), and an ELAMortuary workshop Old Data-New Insights: Reframing the value of legacy materials from French excavations at Susa (8/11/2023, University of Naples, “L’Orientale”). This online-in person hybrid workshop with the invited participation of the Louvre Museum (France) and the Susa Museum (Iran) served as an occasion to both launch the project database and discuss the potential for using legacy data from Susa.
