Sofalin there is continuity in the use of texts, beveled-rim bowls, standardized units,
sealings, and cylinder seals from Late Uruk to the Proto-Elamite Period.” Also, the
recent excavations at Tepe Sialk uncovered a Late Uruk ( 3750 – 3350 BC– Sialk III)
settlement indicating Mesopotamian contact with the central plateau. The excavation
of Late Uruk metallurgical installations, involving the production of silver, gold, lead,
and copper, suggest the initiative for Uruk contact. Although no administrative building
was uncovered, the presence of cylinder seals and sealings suggest an administrative
centralization within a “proto-urban social structure” (Nokandeh 2010 ).
The “cause(s)” of the P-E expansion, even if seldom addressed, mirror those for the
Uruk Expansion: trade and the exploitation of distant resources. The exploitation of
metal resources at Tepe Sialk, the transshipment of lapis lazuli from Shar-i Sokhta, the
presence of elaborate carnelian beads of Indus manufacture, or the production of
carved chlorite vessels in southeastern Iran, all representative of artifacts recovered from
tombs and temples in Mesopotamia, are frequently cited as evidence for Mesopotamia’s
reliance on Iran for its acquisition of precious goods. The majority of P-E sites,
however, lack evidence for the production of commodities and are not adjacent to
significant resources. There is, in fact, little, if any, evidence to support the notion that
the Proto-Elamite world was directed by a centralized authority or represented a
solitary state. Harriet Crawford ( 1973 ) has drawn our attention to “invisible exports,”
commodities that do not survive the archaeological record. Their existence is unde-
niable and of significance, but one wonders what they might have been to fuel so
extensive a migration, colonization, and distribution of either the Uruk or the P-E
culture communities.
It is instructive to review the nature of the P-E tablets at Tepe Yahya so productively
examined by Peter Damerow and Robert Englund ( 1989 ). The large bulk of the tablets
(twenty-one of twenty-seven) are concerned with the measurement of quantities of
grain. Damerow and Englund’s summary ( 1989 : 62 – 63 ) remains the best to date on the
nature and function of P-E tablets, and may, with little variation, apply to other P-E
settlements on the Iranian Plateau.
1. “The similarity of the proto-elamite texts from these outlying sites to those from Susa
seems, in fact, less suggestive of political or economic control of these settlements
by interests centered in or around Susa – or for that matter any other external center
- than of the mundane functioning of more or less independent economic units.”
- “The texts, so far as we have been able to classify them, record however the dis-
pensation of product from agricultural activity, in particular the rationing of quanti-
ties of grain to presumable workers under the direction of household administrators,
and possibly the disbursement of grain for the purpose of sowing, as we think, rather
unimposing fields. The level of these administrative notations, the size of the
recorded numbers of animals and humans and the measures of grain, are without
exception entirely within the range of expected localactivity.”
- “There was no archaeological evidence in Yahya suggesting that this apparent foreign
element had assumed administrative control of the settlement by force might be
indicative of a peaceful coexistence between an indigenous population and admini-
strators of foreign origin.”
- “The complete absence of references in these texts to the exploited resources of the
regions, in particular of metals or stone, suggested that such exploitation, if at all
–– Iran and its neighbors ––
