ABSTRACT
The Luristan bronzes have been a subject of archaeological research for over fifty years yet they still remain an enigma. Before 1930 the small number of the then unrecognized Luristan bronzes that had sporadically surfaced in Europe was attributed by dealers and scholars to areas and cultures outside of Iran. The most important of ail field work in Luristan, because of its manifold accomplishments, is that of L Vanden Berghe. A number of manifestly modern creations that have surfaced on the antiquity market over the years, along with genuine material and via the same channels, has been incorporated into the Luristan repertory. A considerable number of stray, non-Luristan artifacts, mostly weapons and vessels, bearing Mesopotamian cuneiform inscriptions and dating from the third to the first millennia BC, have been accepted as deriving from Luristan and western Iran.
