Luristan Bronzes at the LACMA

Perusing the online exhibits of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, I was awed by their amazing collection of Luristan bronzes. These objects were made during the early Iron Age, ca. 1250 to 700 BCE, in the Luristan district of west-central Iran.

In the 1920s and 1930s several enormous cemeteries in this region were looted, and these fascinating objects flooded onto the world antiquities market. This explains how they ended up in the LACMA; as I said before about their collection of American Indian art, much of their stuff comes from private collections built up in the early 20th century, and several very wealthy Californians seems to have gone wild for this stuff when it was all the rage.

The full range of Luristan material is represented here: finials or staff heads like the one one above and the three goats at the top;

weapons;

 horse harness;

chariot fittings;

and pins.

I love this mysterious style, and I am fascinated by the world historical processes that lead to a huge collection of artifacts from one small mountainous region, their meaning and purpose largely unknown, ending up in the hands of movie moguls 3000 years later on the other side of the world.