Fragile Images: Clay Media in Early Iran - the materiality and imagery of administrative practices in the Late Chalcolithic to Early Bronze Age (FRIMCLAY)

FRIMCLAY项目旨在通过全面研究用于控制货物、原材料和劳动力流动的行政媒介，即印在粘土上的印章和文字，以及用于这种实践的印章，来调查公元前4世纪中期至公元前3千年初伊朗早期制度化政治和经济体系的形成和运作。目标时期概括了从伊拉克和胡齐斯坦低地的乌鲁克模式的早期政治向他们的高地邻居寻求原材料和劳动力（乌鲁克中后期，公元前3700-3350年），以及随后在原始埃兰时期（公元前3350-2800年）通过形成集中的原始城市政治网络在伊朗高地适应经济控制系统的时期。乌鲁克中心和他们的高地邻居之间的早期接触的性质，以及随后标志着原始埃兰时期的社会转型，都没有得到很好的理解，但确保获得资源的必要性似乎是其核心。因此，这个项目建议采用一种以实践为导向的重点，关注他们的符号媒体，从而控制资源。一个历时和超区域的视角有望对当地的实践和发展打开一个不同的观点，从而允许承认隐藏但有意义的多样性。通过对早期中央集权所使用的控制和自我表现媒介的创新多代理分析来解决这些问题，由粘土制成的行政设备，如容器和门上的粘土锁上的密封件，刻有和密封的粘土碑，以及适用于粘土媒介的印章和圆柱印章，该项目将为早期社会和经济等级模式的概念化和实际实施提供重要的新视角。我们打算研究来自苏萨、锡尔克、戈丁、马尔扬、叶海亚和伊朗其他考古遗址的相关粘土行政媒介收藏，并在第二步中将这些材料与乌鲁克和法拉的材料进行比较。我们的方法结合了材料和实践方法以及图像分析，并解决了粘土介质的材料质量，粘土装置的使用和密封的管理实践，以及个人和机构在自我表现中使用的图像。

Project FRIMCLAY aims to investigate the formation and functioning of early institutionalized political and economic systems in mid 4th to early 3rd millennium BCE Iran through a holistic study of the administrative media employed to control the flow of goods, raw materials and labor, namely sealings and script impressed onto clay and the seals used for this practice. The targeted period encapsulates the period from the moment when the early polities of the Uruk model in the lowlands of Iraq and Khuzestan reached out to their highland neighbors in a quest for raw material and labor force (mid-late Uruk period, c. 3700-3350 BCE), and the subsequent adaptation of systems of economic control in the Iranian highlands through the formation of a network of centralized proto-urban polities in the proto-Elamite period (c. 3350-2800 BCE). Neither the nature of the early contacts between the Uruk centers and their highland neighbors nor the following social transformation marking the proto-Elamite period are well understood, but a necessity to ensure access to resources seems to be at its core. This project therefore proposes to adopt a practice-oriented focus on their media of notation and thus, control over resources. A diachronic and supra-regional perspective is expected to open a differentiated view onto local practices and developments and thus to allow the recognition of hidden but meaningful diversity. By addressing these questions through an innovative multi-proxy analysis of the media of control and self-representation employed by the early centralized powers, administrative devices made from clay such as sealings applied to clay locks from containers and doors, inscribed and sealed clay tablets, as well as the stamp and cylinder seals proper applied to the clay media, this project will contribute important new perspectives on the conceptualization and practical implementation of early modes of social and economic hierarchies. We intend to study relevant collections of clay administrative media from the archaeological sites of Susa, Sialk, Godin, Malyan, Yahya, and other sites in Iran, and to compare these with materials from Uruk and Fara in a second step. Our methodology combines materiality and practice approaches as well as iconographic analyses and addresses the material qualities of the clay media, the administrative practices in the usage and sealing of clay devices, and the iconography employed by individuals and institutions in their self-representation.