Elite Mortuary Culture at Susa

A crucial task of archaeological research today is to comprehend and critically interpret the rich legacy data from early excavations of ancient Near Eastern settlement sites. Yasmina Wicks targets the problematic and rarely consulted early 20th century records of excavations by French delegations at the UNESCO World Heritage-listed site of Susa in today’s southwest Iran. By scrutinizing published and unpublished documentation, she generates a new dataset of over 250 never-before-studied clay coffin burials to reveal a mortuary practice that began to flourish in the city at around 2000 BCE. These coffins were not used as upright-set containers but were instead overturned to provide a covering for the body, a distinctive method attested also at contemporary settlements in neighboring southern Mesopotamia. The study begins with a discussion of the possibilities and constraints of using the legacy data, and then proceeds to an analysis of the typology, chronology, site distribution, and frequency of the coffins. Next it examines their rich and varied grave good assemblages, and the mortuary rites and demographic profile associated with their use. Finally, it reflects on the broader significance of the overturned clay coffin practice, concluding that it can be seen as a key signature of Susa’s bicultural society, offering a new perspective on Elamite and Mesopotamian cultural connectivity when the city left the political embrace of Mesopotamia’s Ur III dynasts at the end of the Early Bronze Age and became the lowland seat of the Elamite rulers from the Zagros Mountains. The mortuary behavior associated with the coffins, initially characterized by an unprecedented consumption of wealth, emerges as a response to new socio-political and socio-economic conditions both locally and across the Near East in the pivotal early years of the Middle Bronze Age.