Proto-Elamite in the Iranian Context.

I’m reading Kate Kelley’s Proto-Elamite: Writing and Society in Early Iran (see this post), and I thought this passage (pp. 15ff.) was of enough general interest to post:

Throughout the twentieth century, the archaeology of early Iran has often been analysed through a filter of its western neighbour Mesopotamia (Petrie 2013; Alizadeh 2021). The invention of proto-Elamite and its spread across Iran are no exceptions, having been described as an echo of the cultural model of the Uruk Phenomenon, a ‘social experiment’ (Lamberg-Karlovsky 1989: x) which may have, like the model proposed for Uruk, involved administrators (from Susa?) establishing a presence at strategic locations with an eye to securing trade. The mid fourth-millennium connections just described remain a crucial piece of the puzzle, but this should be paired with research into regional developments in their own terms. The state of decipherment of proto-Elamite has made it difficult so far to dive broadly into differences in the way writing was used in the proto-cuneiform and proto-Elamite worlds, but this is a research area with much future potential.

Although most of the numerical systems in proto-cuneiform and proto-Elamite are shared (Section 5.3), only a few dozen of the many hundreds of non-numerical signs in each system can be shown to be related. […]

If we were dealing with a fully developed writing system – that is,
heavily invested in communicating through recording the sounds of language – it would be natural to think that the writing system differences at Uruk and Susa were stimulated by different dominant languages. But in the case of proto-writing we may look to a more general divergence in culture that made the sharing of a socially embedded symbol system unacceptable, such as differences in religion, political expression, and social and economic organisation. The varied geographic settings at which proto-Elamite has been found (Section 3) contrast with the lowland distribution of proto-cuneiform. Moreover, the (as yet contentious) possibility that mobile groups were a significant social force in the proto-Elamite world may set the Iranian invention of writing apart (Section 2.4.1). Daneshmand (2024) introduced another important possibility, that the phenomenon of schismogenesis – intentional cultural differentiation from one’s neighbours – may also have shaped the use of writing in Iran from the proto-Elamite period and onwards. The history of writing in Iran for the next 3,000 years was very different from its western neighbours.

Looking deeper into the past, Stein (2020) argues that leadership strategies in Susa in the late fifth and early fourth millennia differed from both northern and southern Mesopotamian neighbours in emphasising public ritual associated with monumental constructions and in greater reliance on a ‘prestige goods economy’ (e.g. rich finds at Susa of copper coming from the Anarak area of central Iran) than on staple finance such as the irrigation-based agricultural surplus of southern Mesopotamia. […]

An important formulation that may set the Iranian invention of writing apart from its western neighbour is that of group mobility. Some evidence for reductions in settlement in several regions of Iran during the proto-Elamite period has contributed to a wide range of scholars suggesting that the period witnessed a rise of pastoral nomadism and ‘tribal’ organisation echoing much later historic models (Sumner 1986). A. Alizadeh (2010) noted that recent historical mobile pastoralists of the Zagros own properties and cultivate crops in both their upland summer pasturage areas, often in marginal intermontane valleys, and in their lowland winter ones. J. Alden (2013: 269) envisaged cultural links between proto-Elamite Tal-e Malyan and Susa through the seasonal mobility of herders, by which highland herders traded goods with Susians, perhaps (though it is unclear how) involving administrative technologies in the process. Alden also suggested that, once back in Malyan, proto-Elamite herders ‘greeted relatives who had been left to watch over the winter crops and closed-up buildings at Tal-e Malyan, unsealed the locked doors and closed jars, and checked the contents of their storerooms against the numbers recorded on their tablets’.

Alden’s proposal for connecting administrative technology and mobility is alluring, but it has hardly been tested in relation to the textual and sealing evidence. […] Perhaps new studies can devise ways to test the hypothesis that group mobility patterns played a part in the development and spread of proto-writing and sealing practices (see later; Yeganeh et al. 2025). This could offer substantially new perspectives on the development of early writing systems, as compared to the large urban cultic household management model for proto-cuneiform in neighbouring Mesopotamia. Yet also for proto-cuneiform, it has been suggested that writing and sealing were occasionally involved in documenting resources that moved with people between cities, where it has been framed as a method of strengthening political and cultural ties between centres (Matthews & Richardson 2019).

Potts (2014) and Petrie (2013: 462–466) offer a critical assessment of the methodologies, terminologies, and significant gaps in evidence surrounding the hypothesis that the introduction of large-scale nomadism is a defining feature of the proto-Elamite period. Yet even critical commentaries admit that the collected evidence calls for taking the possibility of group mobility seriously, both in the form of transhumant mobile pastoralism and other possible ‘mobile and/or migratory components’ (Petrie 2013: 488).

Obviously we don’t know the details, and maybe we never will, but it seems to me that nomadism has to be a useful lens through which to look at the evidence.