In vol. XXVII of Iran, R.H. Dyson and O.W. Muscarella published a papet directed against the redating of the destruction of Hasanlu IV to 714 B.C., as proposed in my article “Who Destroyed Hasanlu IV?”. The authors rejected my attempt to revise a date proposed some thirty years ago, when excavation at the site was in its initial stage. But periodic revision is a perfectly normal and often unavoidable procedure in the interpretation of archaeological material.
I first felt a need to redate Hasanlu IV's final destruction, when investigating the Eurasian and Ancient Near Eastern types of horse bridle, and local Hasanlu IV style ivory carvings with battle scenes. The chronology of these artifacts, as I tried to show, excludes the ninth century B.C. These categories of objects, unlike other artifact types, can be associated only with the eighth century. I will make bold to recapitulate here some of my positions, since it is clear from the arguments of Dyson and Muscarella that quite a number of my basic assumptions have been misunderstood…
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