Luristan bronze

in sources in English) are small cast objects decorated with bronze sculpture from the Early Iron Age which have been found in large numbers in Lorestān Province and Kermanshah in western Iran.

[6] Representations of animals are common, especially goats or sheep with large horns, and the forms and styles are distinctive and inventive.

[9] Luristan bronze objects came to the notice of the world art market from the late 1920s and were excavated in considerable quantities by local people, "wild tribesmen who did not encourage the competition of qualified excavators",[10] and taken through networks of dealers, latterly illegally, to Europe or America, without information about the contexts in which they were found.

[13] Since 1938 several scientific excavations have been conducted by American, Danish, British, Belgian, and Iranian archaeologists on the cemeteries in areas including the northern Pish Kuh valleys and the southern Pusht Kuh of Lorestān; these are terms for the eastern "front" and western "back" slopes of the Kabīrkūh range of mountains, part of the larger Zagros Mountains, which define the region where the bronzes seem to have been found.

[15] Somewhat curiously, two very characteristic Luristan pieces have been excavated in the Greek world, on Samos and Crete, but none in other parts of Iran or the Near East.

[18] From slightly before the period of the canonical bronzes, a number of daggers or short swords said to come from Luristan are inscribed with the names of Mesopotamian kings, perhaps reflecting patterns of military service.

"[22] The stylistic development of the pieces is now thought to be from naturalistic depictions of humans and animals towards stylization, though it is not yet clear if this was a consistent trend.

[24] Among the most characteristic are a range of objects with a hollow socket or open ring, designed to be fixed at the top of a pole or other vertical support, often using a separate intervening fitting.

These may be described as finials, standards and tubes; Muscarella and other writers use all these terms, differentiating between them on the basis of the form of their decoration alone.

[25] Taking the groups in what is now generally considered to be their broad chronological sequence, the first are the "animal finials", with two rampant confronted animals, generally a pair of large-horned ibex (or goats or mouflon sheep) or felines, facing each other with a central tube or open rings (formed at the junctions of their front and hind feet) between them.

There are often rings in the upper or rear parts of the plates, for securing straps to tie round the horse's head.

[35] Though horse riding was very common among Near Eastern elites by this date, who all used some type of bit, this large style of cheekpiece is only found in Luristan.

Many pieces have small spikes on the reverse of the plates; it is thought these were either used to control the horse, or to fix backing pads of softer material.

Their use is uncertain; they were probably both used as votive offerings, as the numbers found in the excavated temple at Surkh Dum suggests, but also worn as decoration or for fastening clothes.

The disk-headed pins are made from sheet metal by repoussé and chasing work, engraving and other techniques, so differing from the types described above, which are cast.

Many designs centre on a large face, and in general humans predominate over animals in their decoration, another difference to the other types.

[40] Other types include bronzes centred on a large ring, mostly decorated with animals in way similar to the finials and cheekpieces.