Bronze Weapons of Toll-e Shoqa, Marvdasht Plain, Fars: National Museum of Iran Collection

The correct position and the determining role of the second and first millennium BC cultures in the Fars region (Marvdasht plain) which we know as the Shoqa/Timuran cultures and the importance of this culture in the transition from the prehistoric to the historical period (Achaemenid) are still not well known. Despite of extensive archaeological research that has been done in the Marvdasht plain and the presence of significant sites of this period, due to the limited and generally very old excavations in these sites, it is still difficult to understand these developments. During that time, huge developments were taking place in Khuzestan and Fars regions; Changes usually created many conflicts between native cultures and southwestern cultures origin (Elamite).Some archaological findings, such as weapons, are signs of the height of such conflicts in the past. This paper will study and introduce the collection of weapons of Toll-e Shoqa, which were obtained from the excavations of Mahmoud Rad in 1942 and Vandenberg in 1950 in that site, those are now kept in the National Museum of Iran. These collections have been studied recently in the inventory project in the National Museum of Iran archives. So far, few cultural materials from Toll-e Shoqa have been published and more emphasis has been placed on its pottery; the pottery is the basis of the relative chronology of this period in the Fars region. Unfortunately, the results of the archaeological excavations in Shoqa were never fully published and all its cultural materials were not introduced. In the organizing project of the National Museum of Iran which will be described and analyzed in this paper.