CACHE member Associate Professor Javier Álvarez-Mon discusses his latest book, The Monumental Reliefs of the Elamite Highlands.
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Amongst the civilizations to have participated in the dynamic processes of contact and interchange that gave rise to complex societies in the ancient Near East, Elam has remained the least known. Situated in the southwest of present-day Iran, Elam (ca. 4200-525 BC) differed from the contemporary cultures that emerged in the Nile valley and the lands of Mesopotamia in that its physical configuration embraced not only the agriculturally rich alluvial plain of Khuzistan, but also parts of the Zagros mountain ranges.
The Monumental Reliefs of the Elamite Highlands documents and analyses for the first time a corpus of eighteen Elamite monumental highland reliefs, which—hitherto preserved by their remote location and anonymous existence—have recently become imperilled by an influx of tourists and the development of the surrounding landscapes.
In my analysis of these reliefs, I draw from the complementary disciplines of art history and archaeology, giving equal weight to the archaeological context of these artefacts and traditional methods of artistic analysis in order to determine the nature and significance of each artefact’s form and theme.
At the same time, the book’s dual emphases on ritual-religious and aesthetic-ecological phenomena respond to the contemporary challenges of the dissociation of human existence from nature and the commodification of the environment on an unsustainable scale, presenting the preservation of this remarkable corpus of monumental art as a matter of urgency.
With this book, I aim to safeguard this important part of Iran’s cultural heritage. The book is richly illustrated with hundreds of color photographs and line drawings. The Monumental Reliefs of the Elamite Highlands is sure to become an invaluable reference to scholars who study the Elamite and other ancient civilizations.
By Javier Álvarez-Mon