A Suggest on Toponymy of Several Elamite Regions Including Zabshali, Tukrish and LU.SU

Abstract

This study focuses on three regions namely Zabshali, Tukrish and LU.SU. So far, there have been no studies conducted extensively on the regions surrounding Elamite. One of the surrounding regions cover the north of present-day provinces Fars and Khuzestan as Elamite centres in the ancient era. The noteworthy point about these regions is their potentially rich metal mines. This has been mentioned in the Mesopotamian inscriptions, mainly explaining the link between the Mesopotamian plain and the highlands of Elam. The present-day provinces, Khuzestan and Fars, have small potentials for metal mines. Hence, they only served as surrounding regions supplying the metals. However, little investigation has been done on the archaeological data from the Elamite Era. It is crucial to carry out a historical study on these regions along with the archaeological data to enlighten the dark spots in the Elamite Era, and ultimately provide a toponymy of the Elamite cities. One instance of such archaeological data involves various types of local pottery in Khuzestan (as a central city of Elam), which was compared through petrography against the samples recovered in Isfahan and Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari (as two surrounding regions). Thus, this paper intends to discuss more condently the era in which this type of pottery was built and its origin in order to provide a toponymy of the previously mentioned cities based on historical and archaeological data.

Keywords

• Elamite Pottery
• Haft Tapeh
• LU.SU
• Zabshali
• Tukrish