Bruno Overlaet is a Belgian archaeologist and Professor of Ghent University. He is the Curator of the Iranian collection of the Royal Museums of Art and History, Brussels (Belgium). Overlaet is known for his works on Ancient Near East. [1] [2] He is a winner of the Farabi Award and is a co-editor of Iranica Antiqua . [3]
The Bronze Age was a historical period characterised principally by the use of bronze tools and the development of complex urban societies, as well as the adoption of writing in some areas. The Bronze Age is the middle principal period of the three-age system, following the Stone Age and preceding the Iron Age. Conceived as a global era, the Bronze Age follows the Neolithic, with a transition period between the two known as the Chalcolithic. The final decades of the Bronze Age in the Mediterranean basin are often characterised as a period of widespread societal collapse known as the Late Bronze Age collapse, although its severity and scope is debated among scholars.
The Iron Age is the final epoch of the three historical Metal Ages, after the Chalcolithic and Bronze Age. It has also been considered as the final age of the three-age division starting with prehistory and progressing to protohistory. In this usage, it is preceded by the Stone Age and Bronze Age. These concepts originated for describing Iron Age Europe and the Ancient Near East. In the Archaeology of the Americas, a five-period system is conventionally used instead; indigenous cultures there did not develop an iron smelting economy in the Pre-Columbian era, though some did work copper, bronze, unsmelted iron, and iron from East Asian shipwrecks. Indigenous metalworking arrived in Australia with European contact.
The Diyala is a river and tributary of the Tigris. It is formed by the confluence of the Sirwan and Tanjaro rivers in Darbandikhan Dam in the Sulaymaniyah Governorate of Northern Iraq. It covers a total distance of 445 km (277 mi).
Lorestan province is one of the 31 provinces of Iran. Its capital is the city of Khorramabad.
The Zagros Mountains are a long mountain range in Iran, northern Iraq, and southeastern Turkey. The mountain range has a total length of 1,600 km. The Zagros range begins in northwestern Iran and roughly follows Iran's western border while covering much of southeastern Turkey and northeastern Iraq. From this border region, the range continues southeast to the waters of the Persian Gulf. It spans the southern parts of the Armenian highlands, and the whole length of the western and southwestern Iranian plateau, ending at the Strait of Hormuz. The highest point is Mount Dena, at 4,409 metres (14,465 ft).
Carchemish, also spelled Karkemish, was an important ancient capital in the northern part of the region of Syria. At times during its history the city was independent, but it was also part of the Mitanni, Hittite and Neo-Assyrian Empires. Today it is on the frontier between Turkey and Syria.
Tel Megiddo is the site of the ancient city of Megiddo, the remains of which form a tell or archaeological mound, situated in northern Israel at the western edge of the Jezreel Valley about 30 kilometres (19 mi) southeast of Haifa near the depopulated Palestinian town of Lajjun and subsequently Kibbutz Megiddo. Megiddo is known for its historical, geographical, and theological importance, especially under its Greek name Armageddon. During the Bronze Age, Megiddo was an important Canaanite city-state. During the Iron Age, it was a royal city in the Kingdom of Israel.
Israel Finkelstein is an Israeli archaeologist, professor emeritus at Tel Aviv University and the head of the School of Archaeology and Maritime Cultures at the University of Haifa. Finkelstein is active in the archaeology of the Levant and is an applicant of archaeological data in reconstructing biblical history. Finkelstein is the current excavator of Megiddo, a key site for the study of the Bronze and Iron Ages in the Levant.
Zincirli Höyük is an archaeological site located in the Anti-Taurus Mountains of modern Turkey's Gaziantep Province. During its time under the control of the Neo-Assyrian Empire it was called, by them, Sam'al. It was founded at least as far back as the Early Bronze Age and thrived between 3000 and 2000 BC, and on the highest part of the upper mound was found a walled citadel of the Middle Bronze Age.
Arslantepe, also known as Melid, was an ancient city on the Tohma River, a tributary of the upper Euphrates rising in the Taurus Mountains. It has been identified with the modern archaeological site of Arslantepe near Malatya, Turkey.
Godin Tepe is an archaeological site in western Iran, located in the valley of Kangavar in Kermanshah province. The importance of the site may have been due to its role as a trading outpost in the early Mesopotamian trade networks.
The Yaz culture was an early Iron Age culture of Margiana, Bactria and Sogdia. It emerges at the top of late Bronze Age sites (BMAC), sometimes as mud-brick platforms and sizeable houses associated with irrigation systems. Ceramics were mostly hand-made, but there was increasing use of wheel-thrown ware. Bronze and iron arrowheads, also iron sickles and carpet knives among other artifacts have been found.
Luristan bronzes 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. They include a great number of ornaments, tools, weapons, horse-fittings and a smaller number of vessels including situlae, and those found in recorded excavations are generally found in burials. The ethnicity of the people who created them remains unclear, though they may well have been Iranian, possibly related to the modern Lur people who have given their name to the area. They probably date to between about 1000 and 650 BC.
Purushanda was an Anatolian kingdom of the early second millennium prior to the common era. It was conquered by the Hittites circa 1700 BC. The name disappears from history soon thereafter.
Iranica Antiqua is a scholarly journal publishing papers on ancient Iran in its broadest sense. The journal was established by Iranist Roman Ghirshman and Louis Vanden Berghe in 1961. The journal is edited by Prof. Em. Dr Ernie Haerinck and Dr. Bruno Overlaet, Belgium. Articles are in French, English or German.
Tell Abraq was an ancient Near Eastern city. Located on the border between Sharjah and Umm Al Quwain in the United Arab Emirates about 50 kilometers north-east of Dubai, the city was originally on the coastline of the Persian Gulf but changing sea levels have placed the remains of the city inland. It is located on the main road from Umm Al Quwain to Falaj Al Mualla.
Ali Akbar Sarfaraz was an Iranian archaeologist.
Bābā Jān Tepe (Tappa), an archeological site in north-eastern Lorestan province, on the southern edge of the Delfān plain at approximately 10 km from Nūrābād, important primarily for excavations of first-millennium BC levels conducted by C. Goff from 1966 to 1969. Work concentrated on two mounds joined by a saddle. The East Mound yielded a series of first-millennium BC buildings above Bronze Age graves. On the Central Mound, excavation concentrated on the Baba Jan III Manor on the summit; an 8 × 6 m Deep Sounding provides a partial late fourth- to mid-second-millennium BC sequence
Feylis, also known as Feyli Kurds, is a Kurdish tribe based in the borderlands between Iraq and Iran. They speak Feyli which is classified as a sub-dialect of Southern Kurdish, but is commonly mistaken as being identical with the separate Feyli dialect of Northern Luri. Linguist Ismaïl Kamandâr Fattah argues that the Kurdish Feyli dialect and other Southern Kurdish sub-dialects are 'interrelated and largely mutually intelligible.'
Bani Surmah is a late Sumerian necropolis, located on a plateau of Pusht-i Kuh, in the heart of central Zagros, Iran. It was studied for the first time in 1967 by a Belgian expedition, on behalf of the Royal Museums of Art and History of Brussels and the Ghent University. Its excavations have brought to light bronze furniture buried and still can be found in this area.