Hybridity en vogue

This necklace was found in Iran (Fig. 1). Nowadays, we know Iran as an independent state in the Middle East. However, at the time of the production of this necklace, the area was part of the Achaemenid Persian Empire.‘Achaemenid’ refers to the dynasty of the rulers of the Empire, while ‘Persian’ indicates its ethnographic and regional origin. See Kuhrt 2001 Showing aesthetic influences from across the Ancient Near East, this necklace speaks to the richness of exchanges at the time. In fact, it was the vastness of the exchange of goods that made the different Ancient Near Eastern cultures popular in the Achaemenid Persian Empire. Imported aesthetics and motifs from afar became a source of inspiration for local craftsmen, who took over certain foreign elements into their own locally produced objects. Sure enough: hybrid objects had become ‘en vogue’.See Samuel Mark. ‘The Long Arm of Merchantry: Trade Interactions’. In Pharaoh’s Land and beyond: Ancient Egypt and Its Neighbors, edited by Pearce Paul Creasman and Richard H. Wilkinson, 115–32. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017.