Perspectives on the Structural Typology of The Late Bronze-Iron age Graves in Iranian Azerbaijan

Abstract

The Bronze and Iron periods mark a move towards further deepening of social and cultural complexities, which eventually would culminate in the rise of early states in northwest Iran. The advent in this period of the extramural cemeteries also gives rise to speculations over the types of communities, convictions, and religious orientations of the contemporary populations. In these cemeteries, the structure of the graves and their burial goods convey concepts and symbols that can help shed some light on part of the questions regarding the culture of the associated populations. Architectural data are available from dozens of burial grounds thus far investigated in Iranian Azerbaijan. Excavations at these places have identified a wide range of similarities and dissimilarities in their placement as well as the structure, construction materials, and burial goods of their graves. Drawing on the excavated data, the present paper is an attempt to appraise the mortuary customs with a special focus on the types of structures of graves in the late Bronze-Iron period. The results reveal a great variability in the form and structure of the burials, to the extent that occasionally two or three different grave types occur at a single cemetery. The exact determining factors for these discrepancies and their scope still elude us as no conclusive evidence exist at present to advance any tenable hypothesis, and one can simply offer some conjectures in this regard. Yet, geography, belief systems, social, economic and political statuses of the buried, and ethnicity were in all probability some of the key factors at work in the emergence of such varied grave architectures.