EXTRACTION AND STUDY OF SUSA POTTERY MOTIFS FROM 7TH TO 13TH CENTURIES

Abstract

Susa is a city in Khuzestan located in the Southwest of Iran. This city was the capital of ancient Elam and then became the capital of the Achaemenian dynasty afterward. One of the significances of Susa in this period , is that it has being the beginning of the Royal Road, the one that led Iran to Aegean sea. Susa hill has been one of the most important issues for researcher and archaeologists and continued excavations in the area from 1850 up to the present show its importance. Susa potteries have clarified this area’s ambiguous culture and civilization since around the fifth millennium BC and continued their life despite the restless history of the Susa city. The arrival of Islam introduced a new era in Susa pottery, and the new forms and decorative designs revived the pottery of this city. Despite its increasing popularity at the time, Islamic Susa pottery has been almost completely ignored by authors and researchers and rarely remarked upon by most Islamic sources. Susa potters were hard working, and most of the decorative techniques were done professionally. In this paper pottery motifs were extracted in a linear form by Rhinoceros 4.0 software and have been studied in four groups of geometric, floral, animal and inscription motifs separately in order to discover not only the design styles, but the importance and status of each genre, in addition to considering the influences of other centers or eras. The quantitative study on objects in this paper indicates that most of the motifs are geometrics, while the fewest are animals; the most common composition of motifs in a material is geometric-floral. Despite the considerable influence of previous periods and other centers of Persian pottery, as well as, the influence or imitation of contemporary centers and the significant importance of the “religious” factor, this paper also shows that Islamic Susa has best manifested its prehistoric traditions, and has deliberately used them along with specific Islamic styles.