The Khazineh Painted Style of Western Iran

Abstract

Dancing is an importance motif in the artistic tradition of the Protohistoric Nera East. In my systematic examination of this phenomenon I have located some 400 depictions of dance, which appear in many varaitions from the seventh-fourth millennia B.C. over a vast geographical range : from Western Pakistan to Anatolia and Egypt, as well as Southeast Europe (Garfinkel 1998). In this work, however, I would like to focus on a specific time span (late sixth Millennium B.C.), and a specific decorated style. In 1902-3 the French archaeologists J.E. Gautier and G. Lampre excavated Protohistoric layers at Khazineh in the Deh Luran Plain, Khuzistan, Western Iran. Their publication presneted the first examples of a distinct type of decoration painted on pottery vessels. This decoration is described as : a motif which shows stylized human dancers standing on each others' shoulders.... It was the Khazineh Painted Style. The purpose of this article is to present the Khazineh Painted Style and to analyse various aspects of this artistic tradition.