At Hasanlu, two periods of one culture were named Iron Age I and II in 1965; the first ended centuries before iron objects are known in Iran. What the labels mean, and how their dates sit against the Met's timeline.
PARALLEL TRACK · Iran (Persia)
The Iron Age in northern and western Iran
A navigation group for Iron Age I, II and III in northern and western Iran, about 1450-550 BCE on the Met's timeline. It runs in parallel with the Elam track of the southwest, and its name marks a cultural change: iron objects appear in Iran only in the 9th century BCE.
Approximately 1450-550 BCEMove through the periods
Its place in the Iran (Persia) scheme
The whole scheme with this period marked; the periods before and after are its neighbours in the row. Boundaries follow the sources and are not to scale.
- The Neolithic in Iran8,000-5,000 BCE
- The Chalcolithic in Iran5,000-3,500 BCE
- The Early Bronze Age in Iran3,500-2,000 BCE
- The Middle Bronze Age and Old Elamite period in Iran2,000-1,500 BCE
- Elam1,500-539 BCE
- The Iron Age in northern and western Iran1,450-550 BCE
- Achaemenid Iran559-330 BCE
- Seleucid Iran323-247 BCE
- Parthian Iran247 BCE - 224 CE
- Sasanian Iran224-651 CE
- Early Islamic Iran651-1,040 CE
- Seljuq and Khwarazmshah Iran1,040-1,221 CE
- Mongol and Ilkhanid Iran1,221-1,353 CE
- Iran from the Muzaffarids to the Timurids and Turkmen1,340-1,508 CE
The frame
This page groups three periods for navigation, as the Met's timeline gives them: Iron Age I, "ca. 1450-1250 B.C."; Iron Age II, "ca. 1250-800 B.C."; and Iron Age III, "ca. 800-550 B.C.". The grouping is a display device of this site, not a new historical division. Encyclopaedia Iranica writes that the terms Iron Age I and II originally related specifically to cultures in northwestern Iran, and dates Iron Age III throughout western Iran. Sources 1, 2, 3.
Two tracks at the same time
This track runs in parallel with the Elam track of southwestern Iran: the Met dates the Middle Elamite period about 1500-1000 BCE and the Neo-Elamite period about 1000-539 BCE, on the same pages as the Iron Age. The two tracks are not one sequence. Iron Age I begins while the Middle Elamite period is under way, and Iron Age III ends close to the end of the Neo-Elamite period; a reader moving between the tracks changes region, not century. Sources 1, 2.
A name, not a metal
The name of the track is a cultural label. Iranica states that in Iran the term "is employed to identify a cultural change", and that iron artifacts "were unknown in Iran until the 9th century B.C.E.", centuries after Iron Age I begins. The sub-periods also overlap in their own ways: Iranica gives no fixed range for Iron Age I; in Luristan, sites from about 1400-1350 or only those after about 1200 may be called Iron Age I, and on one view Iron Age I in Luristan equals Iron Age II in Urmia; and Iron Age III ends about 600 BCE for Iranica and about 550 for the Met, which starts its Achaemenid period about 559. Sources 3, 2.
On this site
Iron Age I has two articles, on Hasanlu V-IV and on the Marlik cemetery, whose source range is wider than the period. Iron Age II has two, Hasanlu V-IV again for Period IV and the first iron objects. Iron Age III has two, on the Luristan bronzes and on Nush-i Jan, Godin II, Baba Jan and Ziwiye. Each sub-period page lists its articles; the Hasanlu article is the only one placed on two of them. Source 1.
Source
Sources and further reading
The research and references behind this page. Rights to external content remain with their owners.
- 1
Iran, 2000-1000 B.C.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art · 2000 · Checked
- 2
Iran, 1000 B.C.-1 A.D. (Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, chronology)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art · Checked
- 3
IRON AGE (Encyclopaedia Iranica, Vol. XIII, Fasc. 6, pp. 605-609)
Oscar White Muscarella · 2006 · Checked
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