Fit for a King: a Fashion for Palaces Across Early Bronze Age Asia, 2500-2000 BC.

Between ca. 2500 and 2000 BC we have significant archaeological evidence for the construction of large secular residences or palaces at numerous sites in many regions of ancient Asia, including Lower Mesopotamia, Upper Mesopotamia, Iran, and Central Asia. These large-scale structures, which are often associated with evidence for bureaucraticadministration and specialised craft activity, also share architectural features such as open courtyards, reception quarters and double outer walls with corridors, suggesting the diffusion of a fashion for palaces. The later third millennium BC was a time of international contacts and interconnections between emergent urban elites, as attested in the widespread distribution of forms of material culture including metalwork and ceramics. In this paper, I will argue that the palaces of the Early Bronze Age kings are a special type of evidence for elite emulation which underpinned the increasingly stratified societies of the trans-Asian world

Keywords:

Early Bronze Age , palaces , elites , Iran , Mesopotamia , Central Asia.