ABSTRACT
This chapter examines dress artefacts discovered in Period IVb burials at Hasanlu, Iran, as aesthetic, sensorial assemblages, and as agential phenomena in an era of political and military crisis at the site. The focus is a distinctive suite of dress items excavated in five female-identified, well-furnished burials. These dress assemblages include short and long metal pins at the shoulders, clustered finger-rings, beaded jewellery at the head, neck, and shoulders, and noisy, tintinnabular clusters of tubes and beads attached to armour scales worn on the upper chest. While such an ensemble would have provided a visual spectacle, its multisensory impact and potential for affectivity is not limited to its visuality. At the nexus of bodies, vibrant materials, environment, and society, this dress suite is constituted through myriad transcorporeal encounters. Not only would this assemblage have impressed itself on the senses of observers, but it would have provided dynamic synaesthetic, kinaesthetic, and cognitive feedback to wearers. In this chapter, dress is framed as a sensorial assemblage and investigated through the lens of agential realism to shed light on the role of the sensorium in the dynamic and deliberate generation of politically charged identities at Hasanlu.
