Tal-e Malyan Overview

John Malden

This application requests funding to publish a final report on the excavations in the GHI area of Tal-e Malyan, in Fars Province, Iran. These excavations were carried out in 1976 and 1978, and they exposed four levels of Kaftari and Qaleh Period architecture dating from 1900 to 1400 B.C. The report on these excavations will be published as Volume IV in the Malyan Excavation Reports series through the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, tentatively titled "Anshan in the 2nd Millennium: The GHI Excavations at Tal-e Malyan."

Malyan (N 30º 00' 38.45" E 52º 24' 32.75") has been securely identified as the ancient city of Anshan. With Susa, Anshan was one of the twin capitals of the Elamite civilization in southwestern Iran. During the 1970’s the Malyan Project carried out extensive excavations in four areas of the site to investigate the three most important eras of the city’s occupation — the Proto-Elamite (3200-2800 B.C.), Kaftari/Qaleh (2200-1300 B.C.) and Middle Elamite (1300-1000 B.C.) periods. Final reports on three of these four large excavations have been published; the project proposed here will complete the publication of the large-scale excavations at Malyan.

The first step in preparing the GHI excavation report will be defining the stratigraphic sequence for the excavation and assigning all excavation units to their proper stratigraphic level. Next, final drawings of the sections and architecture will be prepared and a descriptive account of the GHI stratigraphy and architecture written. Following that, a ceramic typology will be established and chapters describing the ceramics and various classes of small finds will be prepared. These chapters, accompanied by an extensive series of plates and figures illustrating each corpus of archaeological material, will make up the descriptive core of the proposed report.

After the descriptive chapters are completed, an introduction, a chapter on chronology, and an interpretive concluding chapter relating the GHI material to broader issues of Elamite history and archaeology during the second millennium B. C. will be written. Finally, a series of Appendices will be prepared, presenting summary lists of the excavation units, features, and registered finds from the GHI excavations.

The GHI excavation report will provide the first full publication of stratified Kaftari/Qaleh architecture and archaeological material from the Elamite capital of Anshan. It will clarify the ceramic chronology of this era and offer insight into the spatial and economic organization of the ancient city. More broadly, it will make a secure corpus of well-stratified and carefully excavated material relating to Elamite archaeology and history available to the scholarly community.