The Portrait of a Lady Revisiting Louis Vanden Berghe’s Tombe 1 at Karkhai

Almost half a century ago the prolific archaeologist and Director of the Belgian Archaeological Mission in Iran, Louis Vanden Berghe, discovered a pit burial (Tombe 1) 30cm below the ground surface at Karkhai near Abdanan in southern Luristan. He published the burial in 1973 in the popular archaeology magazine Archéologia (vol. 65) alongside a group of typical slab-roofed cist burials from the early Iron Age Kutal-i Gulgul cemetery in the central Pusht-i Kuh where he had been excavating the two prior years (1971-72). This little-known burial is a treasure in terms of the picture it gives of an individual, apparently a woman, who seems to have lived in the northern border area of Elam during the Neo-Elamite II (725/700-520 BCE; henceforth NE II) /Luristan Iron Age III phase (ca. 800/750-650 BCE).