Luristan Special

The Luristan Project

I have collected a few Luristan mask swords (i.e. I bought them from the antiquity market) with the intention of doing a bit metallurgy on my own. However, an opportunity for starting a small but proper research project (defined as being paid by others) came up and I wrote a proposal. It was granted by the "Petersen Stiftung" and some work was done in 2017 / 18.
The basic idea was:

Do some radiocarbon dating for 4 swords.
Use the small specimen that needed to be cut for the dating to check the basic metallography
Cut one sword into two parts with very little saw losses using modern cutting technologies.

That's what we did and the results can be found in the links provided below.

Document	Content
Antrag (Proposal): pdf document	In German Describes what we wanted to do, lists the available specimen, describes technologies.
Abschlussbericht (Final Report) pdf document	In German Describes the results with a few illustrations.
Anhang zum Abschlussbericht (addendum to the final report) pdf document	In German Contains the data and plenty of pictures
General Project Results HTML module	In English Summarizes the findings in some detail and gives some additional results
First set of Large Pictures HTML module	In English Some first large pictures to the "cut sword" No. 5
Special "Cut Sword" results HTML module	In English Several modules with many pictures of the etched surface plus some interpretation and discussion
Second set of Large Pictures HTML module	In English Large to very large pictures of the etched surface of the cut sword
Literature Review HTML module: leading to Word document	In English Evaluation of some papers plus links to these papers
Publication M. Hüls, I. Petri, H.Föll pdf document	In English "Radiocarbon Dating of Luristan Mask Swords"; in: Radiocarbon, Vol 61, Nr 5, 2019, p 1229–1238

Luristan Miscellaneous

I did not only become enthralled with Luristan iron swords but also with Luristan bronze objects. I have actually acquired a few "Master of animals" finials, some of them in very bad condition. Having some experience in treating metals, I was bold enough to clean some of them with satisfying results. I also collected all kinds of information and produced some ideas of my own.
In the links below I will share some of that with you. It should be understood, however, that..

... this has nothing to do with iron steel and swords, and ...
... what I'm relating to the history of these things may be utter nonsense. No guarantees are given.

What you can access are these modules:

Document	Content
The "old" Luristan "Advanced"	Written long before the Luristan project started and all the other modules here.
The Luristan "Master of Animals"- conventional interpretation	Some first thoughts about how these finials developed and what the might mean
The Luristan "Master of Animals" - heretic interpretation	Some afterthoughts about how these finials developed and what the might mean. Rather heretic or uinconventional
The Luristan "Master of Animals" - Collector	Random collectiono of new Luristan pictures and stuff as it comes up
Luristan finials Pictures 1 Before MoA Luristan finials Pictures 2 "Master of Animals"	My collections of Luristan finial pictures pdf documents
Master of Animals General	Essentially a picture collection of all kinds of MoA. throughout history